


dreams of grass

by fovea



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Time, Happy Ending, M/M, Sleeping Together, canon-typical hawkeye breakdowns, well post-canon more precisely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29862069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fovea/pseuds/fovea
Summary: The war never happened. B.J. and Hawkeye still have to deal with its consequences.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt
Comments: 20
Kudos: 39





	dreams of grass

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, thanks to morgan for assuring me that there would be a least one person interested in reading this, for helping with various parts of this & for keeping me sane during the writing process. <3 
> 
> thanks to carlo for proofreading this (rather long) story even though they were very busy & for their always helpful advice. 
> 
> thanks to [horaetio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horaetio/pseuds/horaetio) for being kind enough to check this over one last time. it was very much appreciated!
> 
> & finally, thanks to all the people who helped me with this by answering my questions! 
> 
> A/N: i first came up with this premise for another story i wrote a few years ago and kind of became obsessed with applying it to mash. because there’s no point in writing fics if you can’t even steal your own ideas i decided to write it and 24k later here we are. 
> 
> this story is about two people who have been through several traumatic events/experiences & it examines the ways they try to cope with those. i don’t think there is anything too explicit that should warrant specific warnings or anything you wouldn’t find in the show, but this is a general warning just in case!
> 
> all bad puns & remaining mistakes are mine. xx

B.J. wakes up to the unfamiliar sensation of soft sheets against his skin, of a plush pillow under his cheek. It takes him a few minutes to shake off the remnants of his dream, to convince himself that he isn’t in Korea. That he won’t open his eyes to the sight of Hawkeye curled up on his cot, on the other side of the tent, that he won’t hear the macabre melody of choppers arriving with their endless string of broken bodies, that his hands won’t spend hours sewing up teenage boys. B.J. lets the thought sink in. This isn’t Korea. The knowledge that he’s alive, that he made it, that he came back to his family is both healing and suffocating—Hawkeye’s absence and all the things B.J. hasn’t dared say yet, has barely even begun to admit to himself, threatening to choke him. B.J. thinks back to the plane ride home, to the promise he made to himself. _Today_ , he tells himself, trying to ignore the guilt tightening his chest. _I’ll do it today._

Like every morning since his return, B.J. checks on Erin before doing anything else. He finds her sound asleep, looking just as peaceful as a two-year-old should. Later, B.J. will revisit that moment, the moment right before it happened, again and again, searching for any hint that something was amiss, for any sign that the world had shifted during the night. But, no matter how many times he goes back to it, he won’t be able to find anything. No forewarning. Not even the faintest clue. There had been no indication his world was about to be turned upside down on the morning he had received his draft letter either. Each time, it had seemed to be the most ordinary of mornings.

B.J. gives Erin’s sleeping form one last glance before getting out of her bedroom and making his way downstairs.

“Darling,” Peg greets him when he comes into the kitchen. “You’re up early!”

“Bad habit I picked up in Korea,” B.J. replies. It’s easier to joke about it than say, _I’ve been woken up mid-sleep so often_ _my body doesn’t remember what it’s like to be unconscious for more than five hours in a row_.

“Korea?” Peg says, setting down a cup of coffee in front of B.J. Her brow is furrowed and there’s no mistaking the confusion in her tone. B.J.’s heart clenches.

“You know, that lousy place I just came back from?”

At that, Peg laughs and the panic at the back of B.J.’s throat recedes. Then, “And here I thought your surgical convention was in Chicago!”

And that’s how, for the second time in his life, B.J.’s world crumbles under his feet. There’s something in the way Peg just laughed, as if relieved that she could make sense of what B.J. had said, that makes B.J. believe that she isn’t having him on. That this isn’t an elaborate prank (and Peg isn’t the one to pull pranks, is she? That’s Hawkeye). That, to her, B.J. truly had been away in Chicago. Still, B.J. has to be sure.

“Is surgical convention a new euphemism for war?” he asks lightly, attempting not to let his alarm show.

Peg gives him a worried look. “War? B.J., what are you talking about? Is everything okay?”

If they had had this conversion before he went to Korea, B.J. would have told her. That this isn’t right, that he hadn’t been in Chicago but that he had spent the past two years staring into the insides of young men’s bodies and that with every body B.J. put back together, he felt himself walking one step further away from Mill Valley and his life there. But B.J. has seen enough people lose their grip on reality in Korea—Captain Chandler, Steven, and, the most painful one, Hawkeye—to know that protesting about how sane you are to someone doubting this very thing only leads to more trouble. He has to deal with this on his own. So B.J. swallows the panic and the terror and the impulse to shout that this is all wrong and falls back on the one thing that has never failed him. He smiles.

“I… I hit my head yesterday. Didn’t think it was that bad, but I guess I must be suffering a slight concussion. I had horrible nightmares and I’ve been feeling confused ever since I woke up.” The lie rolls off B.J.’s tongue and he hates himself a little for it.

“Shouldn’t you get this checked out?”

“I’m a doctor, Peg. I’ll be fine.”

Peg nods. B.J. can tell that she’s not fully reassured, but she doesn’t push it, for which he is grateful.

“Do I…” B.J. pauses and attempts to picture what his life would be like without Korea. He’d be in practice. Making it up to Peg for putting him through med school. Only one mortgage left to pay off. That had been the plan, at least. “Do I have a shift today?” B.J. forces out a laugh. “I can’t seem to remember.”

“No, darling,” Peg answers, voice gentle. “Not unless there’s an emergency.”

“Right,” B.J. says. “In that case, I think I’ll make a trip to the public library this morning. Anything you need?” He doesn’t ask her if the library is still on Lovell Avenue. B.J. will have to figure that one out himself.

“No, thank you. B.J… Be careful, will you?”

That’s what she had told him too, in those last moments before they shipped him to Korea. _Be careful. Come back to me_. And, somehow, B.J. had failed at both.

“Of course.”

***

As it happens, the Carnegie library is still located at the same place, unchanged. It’s the same stairs leading up to the same red brick building B.J. recalls. On the way there, B.J. bought the morning paper, which informed him that today was the 8th of August, 1953. Ten days since he came back from Korea. Another thing that hasn’t changed. B.J. blinks, as if this small movement could chase away the myriad questions currently invading his mind, and starts up the stairs.

Half an hour later, B.J. finds himself sitting at a table in the corner of the library, a pile of newspapers from June and July 1950 towering in front of him. He skims over one newspaper after the other, going through articles similar to the ones he had read a lifetime ago. Before Peg was pregnant and when Korea was nothing but a foreign, distant country to him instead of a name haunting his every thought, his every nightmare. B.J. reads about the escalating tension between the North and the South, about skirmishes along the border, about how the U.S. possibly might provide material aid, but nothing about the invasion of South Korea by the North, nothing about a U.N. resolution to intervene, nothing about Truman sending American troops to Korea. He reads until he reaches the end of the pile and has to acknowledge it, no matter how impossible it might seem.

The war never happened.

B.J.’s head is spinning as he tries to go over all the possible explanations. Has he gone mad? Did he suffer an accident back in Korea that drove him to create this delusion, this world with no war? But no. This isn’t a fantasy B.J. came up with to keep himself safe. Peg’s confusion and worry this morning were real. The wood the table is made from, which B.J. can touch, is real. All those newspapers in front of him are real. So that only leaves him with two other possibilities. Either his time in Korea is something B.J.’s mind made up—but why? Why would anyone dream up a war? Why would he?—or it was real and it did happen. It simply didn’t happen _here_.

B.J’s thoughts whirl, moving on to the various implications. If there had been no war, B.J. had never spent two years away from Peg and Erin. He had never felt like he was missing out on the life he had so painstakingly built for himself, like he was failing at being the husband and father he had promised himself to be. If there had been no war, B.J. had never met Hawkeye. The idea makes it hard to breathe. He wonders if Hawkeye is back in Crabapple Cove with his father or if he’s living the life he used to live before the war. If he… If he remembers Korea or if his memory has been erased too.

The newspapers hold no answers to those questions.

***

The house is empty when B.J. comes back, a note from Peg informing him that she and Erin have gone to the playground, and B.J. goes straight to his office. It looks the same as it did the previous evening except that, instead of crumpled sheets of paper—his attempts at writing to Hawkeye without seeming too eager—there are several folders on his desk, the kind used to store patient files. B.J. peers into one of them and, yes, here’s the file of Mrs. Copeland. B.J. has no idea who she is. He takes a small, involuntary step back as if, by doing that, he could distance himself from this life he knows nothing about. He gazes down at his hands, noticing that they are shaking slightly. _One more thing_ , B.J. tells himself. There’s one more thing he needs to do and then he can get out of here.

B.J. unlocks the desk drawer and pulls it out. As expected, there’s nothing left in it. No piece of the still, no red suspenders, no signed picture of Klinger in his dress. All those little things he had brought back with him, those reminders that there had been more to Korea than senseless death and destruction, that he had… that he had _found_ something there, are gone. With careful gestures, as cautious as if he were performing a delicate operation on a wounded body, B.J. closes the drawer, steps out of the room and crosses the corridor in the direction of his bedroom. There, B.J. opens the doors of his closet and looks inside. All the neatly arranged clothes are white, dark blue, grey; there is not one red item of clothing, let alone a pink one. It’s the wardrobe of someone who doesn’t exist anymore. Of a ghost.

B.J. sits down on the bed, but it feels more like falling. It was one thing, a somewhat unreal one, to learn from the newspapers that there had been no war. It’s quite another to be confronted with it so directly. And it’s not as though B.J. had never wished for the war not to have happened. Even if it meant losing Hawkeye, even if it meant losing all those who had become so important to him—Margaret and Klinger, Colonel Potter and Father Mulcahy, Radar and, yes, even Charles. B.J. had wished it a thousand times, just like he knows Hawkeye had. (They had made it into a game, occasionally, into one of those idle stories meant to stave off boredom. _This is a hard one, Beej, but imagine_ _there’s no war. Where and how would we meet?_ Hawkeye would ask _._ And, for a few minutes, they would indulge in the fantasy that the world could somehow be kind enough to prevent the war yet still bring them together.) But he had never thought he would still have to live with it, to remember it. Or that he would appear to be the only one to do so.

And wouldn’t it be ironic that B.J. had spent so much time in Korea hoping to erase that period of his life from his mind as soon as he came back home, hoping that the war would turn into nothing more than a nightmare, a bad dream ready to disappear, only to become, by some incomprehensible twist of fate, the sole person to remember it? To remember that, once upon a time in Korea, millions of people died?

B.J. puts his head in his hands, trying to keep away the memory of Hawkeye’s palm pressed against his forehead on his first day in Korea, on that night in Colonel Potter’s office, steadying and comforting. He takes a breath, and another, and another.

_God_ , B.J. thinks. _God._

***

It takes B.J. two weeks to gather up the courage to call Hawkeye. It’s not that he doesn’t want to or isn’t desperate to hear his voice; it’s that he’s not sure he could bear it—the confirmation that he is alone in this new world, or whatever this is. Of course, he could also try to contact Margaret or Charles or Colonel Potter or any of them. It doesn’t have to be Hawkeye. Except it kind of does. Hawkeye was the one to greet him when B.J. landed in Korea, terrified and with nothing to hang on to but the will to make it out of the war unbroken. He was the one to hold B.J.’s hand, however metaphorically, throughout that first day. The one to guide him through hell. He was the one to keep B.J. sane, and (B.J. isn’t afraid to admit it) he had leaned on Hawkeye, maybe too heavily at times. They all had. And if Hawkeye doesn’t remember it, then maybe it means that there is nothing to remember.

In those two weeks, B.J. does his best to adjust to this life without setting off any alarm bells. The lie about the concussion helps explain his confusion and some of his memory loss. It also helps that B.J. has such a good poker face and is such an accomplished liar. And it’s a funny thing that this occurred right when B.J. had decided to be more truthful—with Peg, with himself. Now, the truth seems too impossible to be put into words. There’s no way he can tell Peg, this Peg, _the reason I don’t know when Erin needs to take her nap is that I spent two years in Korea and missed it all. It used to scare me so much, the idea that I wouldn't be a good father to her, that I would be just as bad as mine, that it kept me awake at night. Even when the shelling had stopped and we knew that there would be no incoming wounded and the only sounds we could hear were the rats squeaking, I would lie in the_ _dark, unable to sleep._ B.J.’s grief at having been away during those years is something he has to keep to himself, soothed only by the certainty that, at least, Erin won’t suffer from it. As for the things B.J. had wanted to confess to himself, he can’t bear to consider them, lest the guilt choke him. So he doesn’t.

Instead, B.J. stumbles around a life that is both familiar and foreign. He learns his colleagues’ names, his daughter’s schedule, his wife’s habits. He forces himself to go through one hour after the other, and if B.J. sometimes feels dizzy, if he sometimes feels like he could collapse under the sheer enormity of what has happened, he deals with it by repeating to himself that he’s home, that his family is safe, that, in this world at least, millions of people have escaped death.

B.J. doesn’t allow his mind to turn to Hawkeye during the daytime. Most nights, he stays up long after Peg has gone to bed. He can’t come up with a way to tell her that he can’t touch her like that anymore, that it doesn’t seem _right_ and so it’s not until he’s confident that Peg is asleep, her breathing calm and quiet, that B.J. slips under the covers next to her. Then, he gets to torture himself with what-ifs and maybes. Could Hawkeye have been right? Had those minutes on the helicopter pad been their last ones together? Had those words been the last ones they had ever said to each other? B.J. had been so sure that they would talk again, that they would see each other again. That he would hold Hawkeye in his arms again. It feels unfair that this moment could have been the end. If B.J. had known… But he hadn’t and there’s nothing he can do about it now. And maybe it’s a selfish thing, hoping that Hawkeye remembers too. If anyone deserves to be free from the war, it’s him. When those thoughts close in on B.J., with the inevitable sense of shame they carry, he shuts his eyes and wills himself to go to sleep.

One evening, Peg takes Erin with her to visit a friend and B.J. is left all alone in the house. He seizes the opportunity. He has no idea if Hawkeye is staying in Crabapple Cove, but even if it’s Hawkeye’s dad who answers, he should be able to tell B.J. how to reach Hawkeye. B.J.’s heart is thundering in his chest, every heartbeat as sharp and painful as a needle stick as he waits for the operator to connect the call, as he waits for someone to pick up the phone. Not hanging up and walking away is one of the hardest things B.J. has ever done.

“Hello?” someone says, and B.J.’s throat goes dry. He would recognize that voice anywhere.

“Hello,” B.J. answers. “It’s…” B.J. stops before uttering something unhelpful like _it’s me_. Swallows. How is he supposed to do this?

“Beej?” Hawkeye sounds small and uncertain, and it breaks and heals B.J. all at once.

“Hawk,” B.J. breathes. “Do you… Do you remember me?” It’s kind of a stupid question considering Hawkeye just said his name, but B.J. has to be _sure_.

There’s a short silence on the other side of the line. Then, “Blond hair, blue eyes, size thirteen shoes, cheesy mustache? Tell me if I’m getting anything wrong.”

B.J. bursts out laughing. It’s either that or cry and if he started, B.J. is afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop. “I shaved the mustache.”

“Oh, so it was meant to slight me personally. The truth comes out, at last!”

B.J. chuckles but doesn’t reply right away, letting himself bask in the warmth and familiarity of Hawkeye’s voice. “It’s good to hear from you,” he says after some time. It comes out more fragile than intended. “For a moment… For a moment, I thought I was alone, you know?”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye answers. “I know.”

_Is this how you felt?_ B.J. wants to ask. _When Sidney took you away after the bus, after the jeep and the Officers’ club. Alone and worried you had lost it and with no one to turn to? God, Hawk, I’m so sorry_. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “So, did you get a ‘welcome to this new world, here’s what happened to you’ brochure? Cause mine was missing.”

“No. And no goodbye note from the old one either.”

“That’s what I thought. Listen, Hawk. I was wondering… What about meeting up? We could talk about this, maybe do some research and try to figure out how we ended up here?” The words rush out of B.J.’s mouth before he can think them through. This: listening to Hawkeye, aware that he’s alive somewhere on the other side of the country— It’s not enough. B.J. needs to see him, to touch him. To make sure that he’s real and not a figment of B.J.’s imagination.

“What about your family?”

“It’d just be for a couple of days,” B.J. replies. “Nothing like before. And anyway, I promised, didn’t I?”

“Promised?”

B.J. can almost _hear_ Hawkeye frown. Maybe Hawkeye doesn’t want to speak about that, about those last moments together.

“Yeah. And a promise is a promise,” B.J. still says. Because there’s a lot of things B.J. can’t do, but he can do this. He can keep his word. “So what d’you say? You, me, a weekend of scientific research at the library? The opportunity to reenact our worst college days?”

At that, Hawkeye laughs. A full-blown, cackling laughter that B.J. wishes he could record and play again and again. “The cheap alcohol is on you.”

It’s as good as a yes and B.J. smiles. “I’ll come bearing bottles of Schlitz.”

“It’s a date.”

After they hang up, B.J. doesn’t move immediately. He stays next to the phone—the proof that Hawkeye is alive, that he remembers him. _It wasn’t the end_ , B.J. thinks. A vision of the chopper pad and Hawkeye tearing himself away from him, of B.J.’s fingers around Hawkeye’s wrist in an unconscious attempt to keep him close a little longer blooms in his mind, unbidden. _It wasn’t the end,_ he repeats to himself, as a strange mix of relief and sorrow start to spread through his body. Relief that whatever happened didn’t turn them into strangers. And sorrow at the knowledge that, even in this world, the war proved to be inescapable for them both.

***

They choose to meet in Boston, about a month after B.J.’s initial phone call. They only talk a couple more times in between, mostly to figure out the details. B.J. can’t come up with a satisfying way of breaking Hawkeye’s existence to Peg—she knows all his friends, not that there are that many—and so he waits for her to be out of the house before picking up the phone. As if Hawkeye was some kind of tawdry liaison B.J. needed to keep hidden. As if Hawkeye had not saved him. B.J. hates it but reasons he won’t have to keep it up for too long. He told Peg he had to go to Boston for a surgical convention and has every intention of coming back with the story of how he became fast friends with Doctor Benjamin Franklin Pierce.

Having a goal again, something to look forward to makes everything a bit easier. For two years, B.J.’s sole purpose had been to keep himself whole and go back to his family. To finally see his daughter grow up. He had wanted it with the sort of hunger that leaves room for little else (yet B.J. had wanted more, had almost convinced himself that he could have it.) And before that, B.J. had had other things to strive toward: becoming a doctor, providing a livelihood for Peg and Erin, being everything everybody expected him to be. He’s never been good at being aimless. So it helps, the idea that he’s going to see Hawkeye soon. That they’re going to do their best to puzzle this out together like they had done so many times before in Korea, when confronted with a complicated case or an unknown disease. B.J. feels less adrift, less like he could wake up and find out that other parts of his life have gone missing—vanished forever without any explanation. If Peg notices a change in B.J., she doesn’t remark on it.

Now that he has the confirmation that at least one other person remembers the war, B.J. decides to try contacting the others. He already has Radar and Colonel Potter’s addresses—and no reason to assume those are different—and Charles and Klinger’s are easy to track down. Father Mulcahy and Margaret’s are trickier. In the end, he manages to dig up the addresses of Father Mulcahy’s sister and Margaret’s father. B.J. figures that they’ll be able to forward his letter. To each, he writes the same thing: _please write back if you remember me, B.J_. The first two weeks, B.J. checks the mail every morning. After all, why would he and Hawkeye be the only ones to have memories of Korea? But no answering letter comes and something within B.J. dwindles. Another week passes, then another.

By the time B.J. leaves for Boston, he’s had no response.

***

B.J. is the first one to arrive at the hotel. He picks up his key at the reception, carries his suitcase to his rather nondescript room, and spends a good five minutes staring at the neatly made bed, wishing he could lie down for a while. Taking an overnight flight was the most practical solution, but B.J. had been too jittery to fall asleep and, despite the copious amounts of coffee he has already ingested today, he is dog-tired. Hawkeye is due to turn up very soon, though, and B.J. can’t imagine not being there to greet him. So he steps out of the room and shuts the door behind him before going back downstairs and settling at the hotel bar, their designated rendezvous point. There, he orders a bourbon in a fit of sentimentality—and maybe to soothe his nerves too. B.J.’s hand shakes a bit as he lifts the glass to his lips. He takes one sip, then another, and is well on his way to finishing his drink when Hawkeye arrives. B.J.’s heart skips a beat.

B.J. has chosen to sit in a secluded corner of the bar and Hawkeye doesn’t spot him right away, leaving B.J. a few seconds to stare at him unnoticed. He’s slouching slightly and he looks tired, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary, although B.J. had hoped that being away from Korea would erase the dark circles under Hawkeye’s eyes. No, what worries B.J. is that something seems to be missing. Something essential, something difficult to put into words. There had always been a refusal to give up, to back down, infusing Hawkeye’s every gesture, every action, no matter how pointless it appeared to be. It’s what had drawn B.J. to him immediately. Even when they had taken him away, they had not managed to extinguish that fire inside Hawkeye, the one that burned so brightly it illuminated everything around him. Now, though, B.J. can’t see it. He swallows, refusing to consider the implications of such a change. Then, Hawkeye’s gaze falls on him. He smiles and all thoughts evaporate from B.J.’s mind. He gets up, closing the distance between them.

“Hello, sailor,” B.J. says as he wraps his arms around Hawkeye. Hawkeye’s hands come to rest against the nape of B.J.’s neck in a manner so reminiscent of the last time they had held each other that B.J.’s eyes water, and his next words come out wobbly. “Buy you a drink?”

“It’s ‘buy you a drink, sailor,’” Hawkeye replies, just as shakily.

“I’ve always had a terrible memory for movie titles.”

“God, Beej…”

“I know,” B.J. whispers. “I know.”

Hawkey exhales. “I can’t believe you lied to me about the mustache, you rat.”

“I didn’t lie. I grew it back,” B.J. mumbles into Hawkeye’s neck. “Was afraid you wouldn’t recognize me without it.”

Hawkeye takes a step back, letting go of B.J.’s neck to grip his arms. Their eyes meet.

“I would always recognize you,” Hawkeye says. His voice is soft and sincere, as if he can sense the fear at the edge of B.J.’s joke. B.J. offers him a trembling smile. Then, Hawkeye adds, “See, you’re not wearing khaki and I can still tell you’re you.”

B.J. laughs and shudders all at once. “It wasn’t doing much for my complexion.” There’s a small silence before B.J. says, “Should we move this reunion elsewhere?”After all, they are standing in the middle of a hotel bar.

“What about my drink?”

“There’s a bottle of scotch at the bottom of my suitcase. I promised I would provide the refreshments, didn’t I?” And a promise is a promise.

“The perfect man,” Hawkeye declares. He squeezes B.J.’s arm once, twice before releasing it. “Well, what are you waiting for? Lead on, Macduff.”

So B.J. walks them back to his room, Hawkeye deciding he’ll go search for his later. As soon as the door closes behind them, they hug again, longer, tighter, relishing in their newfound privacy. Hawkeye’s suitcase falls on the carpeted floor.

“I hope _you_ didn’t bring anything fragile.”

“Only my sanity.”

This time, it’s B.J. who breaks their embrace. He turns toward his suitcase and opens it to retrieve the bottle of not-so-cheap scotch he brought, before pouring the liquid into the one glass he manages to find.

“Mind sharing?”

“Now he asks,” Hawkeye mutters, but there’s no heat in it. “I don’t recall you showing the same consideration when you were stealing my socks.”

“It happened once!”

“If by once you mean a few dozen times.”

B.J. shakes his head and sits on the bed. Hawkeye settles right next to him.

“Here.” B.J. hands Hawkeye the glass. “You do the honors.”

Hawkeye raises the glass. “To clean socks!” he says, before gulping down half of it and passing it back to B.J.

“To the Red Sox!” The scotch burns the back of B.J.’s throat but gives him enough courage to start this conversation. There’s no real way to go about it smoothly, so he just says, wincing, “How has it been going?”

Hawkeye shrugs. They’re not sitting as close as they used to—maybe because neither of them is confident it would be welcomed—but still close enough for one of Hawkeye’s shoulders to brush against B.J.’s. B.J. leans into it a little. “It’s been weird. I’ve always been able to tell my dad everything, you know? But now there’s this huge thing I have to keep from him unless I want to be sent back to the Looney Bin Spa Resort. And I don’t.”

Something very much like guilt constricts B.J.’s chest. They’ve never discussed this or his disastrous visit to Hawkeye. Between the constant influx of wounded men and the war ending and having to say goodbye, there hadn’t been any time back then. That there currently is, though, is of little help. “Food that bad?” B.J. replies. Following Hawkeye’s lead appears to be the safest path. 

“Atrocious. And it was all talk and no spa.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to go back for seconds.”

“What about you?” Hawkeye gives him a searching glance. “Must be difficult not being able to talk to Peg about it.”

“It is,” B.J. says. And yet, he thinks, lowering his gaze, it’s not quite the same thing. By the end of the war, there had been plenty of things B.J. hadn’t been telling Peg. Some to spare her, some because he could barely articulate them to himself. This—it made things more complicated, but it had not created the silence between him and Peg. It had always been there; B.J. had simply never noticed it before. Now that he has, it seems to him he’s spent his whole life surrounded by things he couldn’t say, trying not to drown in them. “God, she thought I was coming back from a convention in Chicago.”

He looks up at Hawkeye, who is staring back at him, face blank, as though he can’t fathom how to respond to this. Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation jumps out at B.J. Hawkeye must be going through a similar realization because they both burst out laughing at the same time. Hawkeye falls against him and grabs B.J.’s wrist as if in need of holding onto something, anything, while B.J. buries his face into Hawkeye’s neck, eyes brimming with tears. They laugh and laugh and laugh, and when it begins to subside, Hawkeye mutters, _Chicago! I wouldn’t have complained about the fo_ _od so much,_ in such a disbelieving tone that B.J. can’t help but dissolve into giggles again, setting them both off for another round.

When they finally calm down, every part of B.J.’s body aches—his belly, his ribs, his jaw—and he feels more like himself than he has in a long while.

***

Copley Square is only a few blocks from their hotel. It’s weird, walking through the city, aware that Charles must be somewhere out there too, and B.J. keeps looking around, a bit wary. It doesn’t escape Hawkeye’s notice.

“Beacon Hill’s that way, Beej,” Hawkeye says, pointing a finger in a very different direction than the one they’re heading toward. “but even if we stumbled upon Charles… I don’t think he would recognize us.”

“Yeah, I—” B.J. starts, intent on telling Hawkeye about the postcards and his fruitless attempts to discover if people other than them remembered when it occurs to him—why would Hawkeye say that? Had he also tried to get in touch with the rest of them?

“Wait, you contacted _Charles_?”

Hawkeye sends him a glance before gazing back down. “No, not Charles. Margaret.”

“Margaret?” B.J. repeats.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye answers, still refusing to meet B.J.’s eyes. “In the beginning. She didn’t… She didn’t remember me.”

There’s no mistaking what Hawkeye means by, _in the beginning_. Even though he had been the one to call Hawkeye first, B.J. had assumed that Hawkeye hadn’t reached out to any of them. That if he were to, B.J. would be at the top of his list. Apparently, he had been wrong. B.J. wants to say, _how did you know where to find her?,_ and, _did I miss how close you two were?,_ and, _I thought_ I _was your best friend_. It shouldn’t bother him so much, but it does and B.J. wishes he could hit something. Instead, he swallows his hurt and gives Hawkeye a sympathetic smile.

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

Hawkeye responds with a small shrug. It’s a painful thing to see, and maybe B.J. understands it better, why some of the fire has been drained out of Hawkeye. He feels sick.

“I sent letters to everybody,” B.J. says. “After our first call. Got no answer. I don’t think…” He doesn’t finish.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye replies. “Me neither.”

They finally arrive in front of the library and its impressive Neo-Renaissance facade, but B.J. doesn’t pay much attention to it. Even though he can recall Charles bragging about how it had been inspired by _the famous bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris_ , in that exaggerated French accent of his, B.J. can’t bring himself to summon a smile at the memory. As they step on the stairs, Hawkeye breaks the uncomfortable silence that has settled between them.

“I couldn’t risk it,” he says in a quiet voice. “That’s why I contacted Margaret before you. I couldn’t risk you not remembering me.”

Then, he disappears into the library, leaving B.J. with no time to answer and the sensation that all the air has been punched out of his lungs. It takes B.J. a moment before he can move again and manages to follow him.

***

“I figured it out,” Hawkeye says, startling B.J. Not that he was falling asleep while reading his book. Or maybe a bit. Quantum mechanics isn’t the most riveting subject.

“Did you?”

“Uh-huh. We got it all wrong, doctor. We should have become physicists instead of physicians.”

“We only got it half wrong,” B.J. points out. “We got the prefix right.” 

“That you’re right doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Hawkeye closes his own book on quantum mechanics and stands up.

“What are you doing?” B.J. asks.

“Dumping physics to try my luck with philosophy. I heard great things about Plato.”

B.J. rubs his eyes before making another attempt to focus on the reading material in front of him. They’ve been at it for hours and haven’t found anything yet—not a clue, not a lead, not the barest hint of a plausible explanation. B.J. doesn’t believe they will. He can’t say he’s surprised, exactly, or that he expected otherwise, but there’s still a sense of disappointment running through his veins. Some part of him, a huge one, wants to understand. Because he’s a scientist and a human being and that’s what they _do_. And because, to B.J., understanding has never just been a way to make his world a little less absurd, it has also always been the first step toward fixing, toward healing. This is why he chose to become a physician rather than a physicist. And how can B.J. heal from something he can't explain? That never was? How can Hawkeye? But there’s something else, beside the disappointment. A feeling B.J. can’t quite identify.

At that moment, Hawkeye comes back. He sets down another pile of books between him and B.J. and immediately immerses himself into one of them. Instead of going back to his, B.J. stares at him. He has always loved watching Hawkeye at work—whether that meant performing complex surgery, devising an insane scheme, or mixing them drinks. It’s in the way Hawkeye gives it all he has, no matter how small the task. It shouldn’t thrill B.J. to see him like this, brow furrowed in concentration, but it does. It reminds him of those games they used to play, of Hawkeye saying, _imagine_ _there’s no war. Where and how would we meet?_ Now, B.J. thinks, _maybe we meet in a library_. _Maybe that’s how it goes_.

B.J. eventually resumes his reading and they spend another hour like this, studying in silence, until Hawkeye shuts his book. B.J. looks up at him. 

“Is Plato that bad?”

“Leibniz. All that cave talk was making me feel icky,” Hawkeye says, with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“Hmm. And what has Leibniz done?”

“Well, according to Leibniz,” Hawkeye recites in a flat voice, “God can only choose one universe among all the possible ones and, since God is perfect, the universe he chose to create must be the best of all possible worlds.” Then, abandoning the dull tone, “See, this is what we should have been thinking about when we were in the middle of our fifteenth bowel resection of the day, Beej! How swell it was to be in the best of all possible worlds!”

“Right,” B.J. says. “I think we’re done here.”

Hawkeye sighs. “I’m sorry we didn’t find anything, Beej.”

“It’s fine, Hawk. It was a long shot anyway,” B.J. replies, hoping this feeling he doesn’t have a name for isn’t showing. “How about we move on to part two of our reenacting the worst of our college days program? Also known as—”

“Let’s get blind drunk?”

“Let’s get blind drunk.”

***

Since they’re actually both in their thirties and have to be up early the next morning—B.J. to catch his plane back home, Hawkeye to accompany him to the airport, then to go back to Crabapple Cove—they first stop for dinner in a little restaurant near their hotel. The food is rather unremarkable, neither extraordinary nor mess-tent-bad, but B.J. doesn’t care. That’s not what he’s here for. The conversation flows as smoothly between them as it always has, and, by unspoken agreement, they avoid everything that has to do with the war or their current situation. B.J. talks about Erin and shows Hawkeye some recent pictures of her, and Hawkeye talks about enjoying Crabapple Cove and spending time with his dad. He gives B.J. some of his food to taste and their hands keep brushing. It’s nothing out of the ordinary; it’s what they _do_. Except they’re not in the middle of a war, using closeness to keep themselves somewhat sane and human anymore. They’re in a restaurant in Boston, alone, and B.J. aches with something he has spent his whole life training himself to ignore. Something very much like desire. For some reason, it’s tougher to ignore it now.

When they’re done with dinner, they go back to the hotel, setting up camp in B.J.’s room. As Hawkeye says, that’s where the scotch is. They settle down next to each other on the mattress, their backs against the headboard, and B.J. tells himself it’s no more dangerous than a thousand things they’ve done before. It’s fine. They trade their one glass back and forth and end up speaking about the topics they had avoided earlier.

“I had a job in New York,” Hawkeye says, blinking and stumbling on his words the way he does when he’s nervous. “At least that’s what dad told me the morning it… The morning it happened. He was supposed to drive me to the airport so I could go back to it.”

“And you didn’t?” It’s not a hard guess.

“No, I quit. I couldn’t—” Hawkeye doesn't continue, but he doesn’t have to. B.J. can fill in the blanks.

“What d’you tell your dad?” he asks to distract Hawkeye.

Hawkeye lets out a laugh. “I told him someone broke my heart, that I couldn’t go back, you know, the usual excuse.”

B.J. doesn’t know, actually. He’d never had his heart broken before… Well. Before. And even if he had, pouring his heart out to his father isn’t something he has ever done. Not that he intends to tell Hawkeye any of that.

“Did he buy it?”

“He bought me drinks. Then he told me that I could feed on lobsters and cry on his shoulder for as long as I needed to. I think he was kinda suspicious that I hadn’t told him I was seeing someone, but he didn’t push.” Hawkeye frowns. “Which _is_ suspicious.”

_Maybe_ , B.J. thinks, _he can see it too,_ _how the fire inside you has diminished_. _It seems like something your father would notice. Maybe it’s all he needs to know._

In the end, they don’t get anywhere near blind drunk, but they do get pleasantly buzzed. It reminds B.J. of some of those rare, quiet evenings in the Swamp. When, for once, they didn't have a drink because they longed to forget all about their day or to drown the boredom, but because if they had to be stuck in the closest place to hell imaginable, they were glad it was together, and this was their way of acknowledging it.

“I should go explore my room,” Hawkeye declares when they begin to yawn more than they talk. “Take a look at what I paid for.”

He’s right; they should probably get some sleep. Yet, B.J. says, “Let me help. Brownish carpet. Floral wallpaper. One double bed in the middle.”

“Beej?”

“Stay. Please. The bed is big enough for the two of us.” B.J. can’t look at Hawkeye directly and getting each word out feels like extirpating burning coal from his throat. But the idea of letting Hawkeye out of his sight before B.J. has to board that plane back to San Francisco is even more unbearable than to ask for what he craves.

“I still… I still have nightmares. Bad ones.”

“I don’t mind.”

There is a small pause. B.J. is starting to contemplate how he could joke his way out of this when Hawkeye says, “Okay. But no complaints in the morning!” 

B.J. laughs, both relieved that he got away with it and astounded at Hawkeye’s audacity. “Me? I never complain.”

“You complain all the time,” Hawkeye insists, and, right. B.J. has learned when not to argue.

So he gets ready for the night and watches Hawkeye do the same. His bedtime routine is familiar and comforting, and it takes all of B.J.’s willpower not to blurt out something pointless like _I_ _miss_ _you_. Hawkeye is right there, after all. When he’s done, Hawkeye slides under the duvet, keeping to his side of the bed. They say goodnight, and B.J. turns off the light. He doesn’t sleep.

“Hey, Hawk,” B.J. whispers after a while. He can tell from Hawkeye’s breathing pattern that he isn’t sleeping either but wants to leave him the possibility to pretend he is. “Will you… Will you be alright?”

The answer is a long time coming. “Of course. That’s what I wanted, right? No war.” It’s no war _here,_ which isn’t the same thing, but before B.J. can reply, Hawkeye goes on. “What about you?”

Visions of Peg and Erin come to B.J.’s mind. His wife and daughter, who know nothing of the two years he spent in Korea, of who he became there. Of how much he’s missed them, how it seemed to tear him apart from the inside, at times, wrecking organ after organ. Who know nothing of Hawkeye.

“Of course. It’s what I wanted.” If asked, B.J. wouldn’t be able to say if he’s answering the question or repeating Hawkeye’s words.

And here it is again, the feeling that had seized him earlier, in the library. But B.J. is too exhausted to try to understand it. Slowly, he extends one arm, searching for Hawkeye. His fingers land on Hawkeye’s shoulder and B.J. gives it a light squeeze. A silent reminder that Hawkeye isn’t alone, not anymore. Just when he’s about to release it, Hawkeye’s hand comes to rest on B.J.’s.

They don’t entangle their fingers, but they don’t move their hands away either. They stay like this, one hand on top of the other, as they fall asleep.

***

This time, there is no sneaking off in the middle of the night to write a goodbye note with rocks and, when B.J. comes awake, Hawkeye is already up. He greets him good morning and tells him to hurry up so they can have breakfast at a small place Hawkeye loves before they have to drive to the airport. B.J. rolls out of bed, quenching any sense of regret at not having woken up next to Hawkeye and starts to get ready for the day.

Hawkeye happens to be in great spirits. He leads B.J. through Boston’s streets again, and the breakfast food is as good as advertised, and Hawkeye dazzles the waitress, the old couple at the table next to theirs, and B.J. It’s the kind of vibrant mood Hawkeye only gets into when he is particularly happy or very close to breaking down. B.J. fears he knows which one it is right now, but he finds it almost impossible not to get caught up in it, not to let it wash over him and make him forget about their impending parting for a while. Hawkeye keeps it up until they arrive at the airport, where he deflates all of a sudden. B.J. isn’t doing so well either.

“C’mon,” B.J. says, as he puts his suitcase down.

He opens his arms and Hawkeye settles between them. B.J. wraps his arms around him, palms pressed against his shoulder blades. So much has happened since that moment on the helicopter pad, their world has changed so thoroughly, yet B.J. has the eerie sensation that nothing has changed at all. That, somehow, they’re still stuck back there or stuck replaying slight variations of the same scene, of the same play. As if caught in a never-ending loop of meeting and saying goodbye. Hawkeye lets out a shuddering sigh, his breath hot against B.J.’s neck. B.J. shivers.

“Don’t be a stranger,” B.J. says.

“I won’t.”

“Promise you’ll write.”

“I will. But I’m not promising you’ll be able to decipher my handwriting.”

B.J. doesn’t point out that he’s spent years reading Hawkeye's terrible penmanship. They’re both aware of it. “No worries, I took a course in egyptology once.”

“You didn’t, you liar.”

“Only way to know is to write.”

Hawkeye laughs, soft and quiet, as B.J. gathers his courage. He takes a step back, sliding his hands down to Hawkeye’s elbows. God, why is this so hard the second time around? Shouldn’t it be less painful now that they’ve already done it once? But it isn’t, and B.J. feels fragile in a way he rarely does. Like it’s taking all his strength not to fall apart. Hawkeye’s gaze shifts away before coming back to B.J.

“You’re gonna be late.”

B.J. nods and releases his grip on Hawkeye’s elbows. He tries, he does, but all he manages is a strangled, “Bye.”

Hawkeye gives him a smile that breaks B.J.’s heart a little. “Goodbye, Beej.”

B.J. picks up his suitcase, turns around, and doesn’t look back.

***

It’s only on the plane, somewhere between Boston and San Francisco, that B.J. finally identifies it, the feeling that has been growing stronger and stronger ever since he first sensed it in the library. That is threatening to choke him, to submerge him.

It’s loss.

Because he’s leaving Hawkeye behind and because… (B.J. closes his eyes as if that could, somehow, help him admit it.) Because ever since B.J. had woken up that morning to find out that a whole part of his life had been erased—one that he hated but that had molded him into who he was—he had been carrying within him the hope that, if he could prove that the war had been real, that it had happened, he would still be able to say: _Here. This is what it has made of me_. _This is what I've become_. He would still be able to fulfill the promise he had made to himself on a similar plane ride taking him away from Hawkeye all those months ago. And, all along, B.J. had failed to recognize the hope for what it was, had barely even been aware of it. But now it’s gone, and it’s devastating.

Abruptly, with such violence it almost leaves him almost breathless, B.J. wishes he could go back. Back to a time before he cut a rope and left a soldier to die, before he realized that no matter how much he wanted it, prayed for it, there was no path he could take that would allow him to leave Korea unscathed. Back to a time before there was a war, before he was forced to witness months upon months of senseless atrocities. Back to a time when he believed that it could be enough to build for himself a normal life. Yes, B.J. is ready to give it all up—meeting Hawkeye and knowing Hawkeye and standing next to Hawkeye—if it means that he doesn’t have to spend one more second suffocating under the sheer weight of it all. But he can’t.

B.J. opens his eyes. On the other side of the window, the sky is a deep blue; this is the only world B.J. has. A world in which he remembers a war that didn’t happen. In which he has to play the role of someone who died long ago. This is the only world B.J. has and he has to live in it. So B.J. rests his forehead against the window and begins to sketch the story he will later tell Peg. The story of how, this weekend, he met Hawkeye.

When B.J. arrives home, he hugs Peg, long and tight, then goes to check on Erin. She’s already asleep, and B.J. presses a small kiss to her forehead before making his way back to the living room.

“Got any interesting mail while I was away?” B.J. asks as he settles down on the sofa next to Peg.

“Just the usual,” Peg answers. “Were you expecting anything special?”

“No,” B.J. says and knows it’s true. The hope that he and Hawkeye weren’t alone has been taken away from him too.

“Come on,” Peg says, changing the topic. “How was it? How are you?”

B.J. looks at her. She isn’t the Peg B.J. had come back to after Korea, the one who had spent two years on her own, raising a toddler, who’d had to take a job at a coffee shop, who’d had to learn to cope without him. Her gaze doesn’t have the same harshness; the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes are less pronounced. Yet, she isn’t the Peg B.J. had left two years ago either. She did spend those years raising Erin with her husband; she’s more confident, calmer. She’s his and a stranger.

“Not the worst surgical conference I’ve ever been to. Actually, I met a really great guy.”

“Oh? What’s his name?”

“Hawkeye,” B.J. answers. “Hawkeye Pierce. I think we’ll try to keep in touch, you know?”

As soon as he pronounces Hawkeye’s name, a wave of relief engulfs him, and when Peg asks for more details, B.J. gives them willingly. It doesn’t matter that he has made up most of them. Hawkeye is… Hawkeye is essential to him, and now he can share that part of himself with Peg. Even though he can never tell her the true story, it feels a bit like sewing back together his own aorta, like finally getting the blood to flow through his body again. And, for a little while, it’s easier to breathe.

***

Later that evening, after Peg has gone to bed and there’s no one left awake in the house but him, B.J. steps into his office, a bottle of scotch in hand. He slides on the floor, his back against the door, and pours himself a drink. It’s hard not to recall another night spent on the floor of an office, one that wasn’t his, thousands of miles away from here, in another life. This time it’s not rage or despair or jealousy that drives B.J. to knock back glass after glass, but grief. And, for one night, B.J. allows himself to feel it.

B.J. raises a silent toast to those two years he didn’t get to share with _his_ Peg and Erin. A toast to his life in Korea—not the one made of blood, wounded bodies, and exhaustion, but the one made of lives saved, of small moments of respite, of children’s rewarding smiles. He raises a toast to his friends. To Margaret, and her willingness to commiserate with him about Hawkeye. To Charles, and his ability to come up with elaborate revenge pranks. To Klinger, and his love for the idea of home. To Colonel Potter, and his quiet understanding of what it was like to miss your wife and child so badly. To Radar, and his unwavering faith in him and Hawkeye. To Father Mulcahy, and his way of offering the most unexpected yet always helpful advice. To those versions of themselves they never were and never will be, that only exist in his and Hawkeye’s memories. To them.

B.J. raises a toast to the hope he had carried within him for almost two months, the one he lost in one afternoon, in a library.

When there’s nothing left to toast to and the bottle is empty, B.J. puts his head in his hands and begins to cry.

***

In the following months, B.J. does his best to settle into this version of what his life would have been like had it not been for Korea. He doesn’t merely adjust to it, as he did before meeting Hawkeye in Boston, wondering if he would once more wake up in an alien world, but attempts to make it his.

Most mornings, B.J. wakes up, chastely kisses Peg hello and drinks his cup of coffee while Peg feeds Erin. He plays with his daughter for a bit before he leaves for his daily shift at the clinic. There, B.J. spends hours doing what he’s good at—sewing up patients and fixing broken bodies. His relationships with his colleagues are cordial but none of them seem to have been his friends _before_ and B.J. makes no effort to change that. The fewer questions he has to answer about himself, the better. He keeps to himself and pretends he doesn’t miss Hawkeye working next to him, shoulder brushing against his, like one would miss a phantom limb. In the evenings, he comes back home and takes care of Erin while Peg cooks them dinner. After putting Erin to bed, he and Peg are left on their own. As Peg buries herself in a book, B.J. busies himself with reading medical journals or Hawkeye’s latest letter. Then, Peg tells him she’s going to bed, and B.J. answers that he’ll join her in a few minutes, but he doesn’t. Instead, he waits until he’s certain she’s asleep before slipping next to her under the covers. Finally, he lets his eyes flutter shut and prays for a dreamless sleep.

When he was a student, B.J. used to hate night shifts. Now, they come as a relief from all this, even though they don’t manage to silence the ever-present voice at the back of B.J.’s mind, whispering to him that it’s all a lie. That he’s only performing a part, and not that well either. The part of a husband, one who can’t touch his wife because she’s not really his, because he’s not really hers. The part of a father, one who wasn’t there for the first years of his child’s life.

During their one R&R in Tokyo, he and Hawkeye had discovered the art of _kintsugi_ , used to mend pottery by refusing to hide the damage and making it an integral part of the new piece. They had been fascinated by those cracked bowls held together by golden lacquer, so similar yet so different from their own sutures. If there was a word to describe B.J.’s life, maybe it would be the opposite of _kintsugi._ It’s a broken vase whose damaged parts have been roughly stuck together in an attempt to repair it, and that looks nothing like it used to. A puzzle whose pieces have been forced to fit together in the wrong way, creating a distorted image of the beautiful picture once promised. There is no escaping it, though. B.J. can’t tell Peg, let alone Erin, the truth, and he… He _owes_ it to them to try. So he goes on, acting like everything is fine and hoping that, at some point, it will stop being an act and become real.

It helps that Hawkeye keeps his promise to write and that B.J. receives news from him every week. Hawkeye’s letters are always light, chronicling the day-to-day events of Crabapple Cove, where he has chosen to stay. He sounds happy to be helping his father with his patients and to be taking it easy for the moment. A large portion of each letter is dedicated to whatever philosophy Hawkeye has been delving into lately. To B.J.’s surprise, he has decided to keep on with the research they started in Boston. After Leibniz, it’s Giordano Bruno and his theory of an infinite universe, containing a multitude of earths similar to ours, then Democritus and his idea that there is an endless quantity of other universes, some expanding, some dying, some ready to collide. None of those strange cosmogonies explain what happened to them, but Hawkeye seems to enjoy exploring them and, while B.J. isn’t sure why Hawkeye is doing this, he likes Hawkeye’s rendition of them. But the part of the letters B.J. dreads and anticipates the most comes at the very end, when Hawkeye recounts a memory.

B.J. can’t recall how they began to exchange memories, but it has become something of a ritual. There’s only ever one per letter, and never longer than a few lines as if more could somehow upset the fragile equilibrium they’ve reached. They most often choose a small anecdote, one that will make the other smile—Hawkeye writes, _that time you buried all of Frank’s underwear,_ and B.J. writes back, _that time you dumped all of Frank’s garbage on a colonel._ Sometimes, they choose more intimate memories. Hawkeye writes, _that time you read to me until I fell asleep when I lost my sight_ , to which B.J. responds, _that time we spent all night at Rosie’s and you gave me flowers to put in my hair_. Those are letters B.J. has to pen in the middle of the night, ensconced in the dark and the quiet, when it feels safe. They tacitly avoid the most painful ones, and so B.J. doesn’t write: _that time you went to Battalion Aid and I spent a whole day fearing you were dead. That time you put your hand on my forehead and let me cry until I had no more tears. That time you drove a jeep through the Officers’ club and I hadn’t seen it coming at all._

The memories aren’t born out of nostalgia; they aren’t an escape from this world like the stories they used to make up for each other in Korea were. If anything, they’re the contrary. A means of anchoring each other to this reality. Of saying—I remember you, all of you. Even the parts everybody else has forgotten. Even the parts we once wished we would forget. Of asking—And you? Do you remember me?

And, as long as they keep on sharing the memories, B.J. knows that the answer is _yes_.

Peg doesn’t say anything about the letters. She doesn’t say anything about B.J. waiting for her to be asleep before coming to bed either. B.J. is grateful that Peg doesn’t appear to question any of it, to believe that something is wrong, and somewhat confused by it. Shouldn’t she realize that he’s not the same man she’s been living with for the past ten years, even though he’s done everything he could to hide it? Or has she noticed, and is she, for some reason, acting like she hasn’t? Or were she and this previous version of B.J. already drifting apart so that B.J.’s current behavior is nothing out of the ordinary? It’s the last possibility that troubles B.J. the most. The idea that even without the war… B.J. quenches the thought before he can finish it. It’s useless to dwell on this.

One evening B.J. slips up. It’s been a long day and Hawkeye’s letter is late, which always makes B.J. fear that Hawkeye will suddenly stop writing and disappear on him. Peg doesn’t seem to have had a much better day. She’s annoyed and snappish, and when she complains about being tired of staying home, B.J. blurts out,

“What about your real estate broker’s license? Don’t you wanna take the exam anymore?”

Peg puts down the dish she's washing and turns back to face B.J., sending him a look that makes him wonder if she’s been seeing right through his lies all along.

“We agreed I would wait until Erin was older. Don’t you remember?”

B.J. doesn’t, of course. So he mumbles an excuse and redirects the conversation toward the Stinson house and the work left to be done before it’s habitable. Peg doesn’t mention his slip up again and B.J. persuades himself that he got away with it. Somehow, he feels no relief. But he goes on, keeping the broken fragments of his life together. He does not become mad. He does not drown in his guilt.

Until, one day, B.J. gets a phone call from Hawkeye’s dad.

***

The phone rings while they’re in the middle of dinner. B.J. puts his fork down, wondering who could be calling at such an hour. Erin must feel confused too because she throws him a curious glance. Peg sighs.

“I’ll go get it,” Peg says. She leaves the room only to come back a few minutes later, a puzzled expression etched on her features. “It’s for you. A Doctor Pierce from Maine.”

“Hawkeye?” B.J. asks. They’ve been sticking to letters since Boston, but maybe Hawkeye needs to say something he can’t write about.

Peg shakes her head. “He said his name was Daniel.”

B.J.’s stomach drops. Why would Hawkeye’s dad be calling? God, did anything happen to Hawkeye? “I’m sorry,” he says. He forces each word out of his mouth, throat tight with anxiety. “You and Erin finish dinner without me.”

He doesn’t wait for Peg to reply, getting up and hurrying out of the kitchen. With sudden and terrible clarity, he remembers being woken up in the middle of the night to answer another phone call from Daniel Pierce and Hawkeye explaining to him that his father wouldn’t call if it weren’t important. How it had led B.J. to step out of a bus while Hawkeye was still in it, putting all his faith in Hawkeye following him. That’s one of the memories that’s a bit too painful for B.J. to write down. 

“Hello?” he says as he picks up the phone. “Dr. Pierce?”

“B.J. Hunnicutt?”

“Yes, it’s me. Is everything alright? Is Hawkeye okay?”

“There’s been… There’s been an incident with one of Ben’s patients. The patient is fine, but it hit him pretty bad. He won’t go back to work and he won’t talk to me about it.” There’s a short silence as if Hawkeye’s dad needs to mull over his words before he continues. B.J. can’t breathe at all. “Ben has been talking about you a lot lately. He seems to value your friendship, so I thought… I thought maybe you could help.”

It feels like missing a step in the dark. Like being back in the O.R. and watching Klinger open the door to tell him, _Captain Hunnicutt, sir. You have to come right away. There’s something wrong with Hawkeye_. Like letting Charles take over his patient and rushing outside to find himself confronted with the vision of Hawkeye sitting unnaturally still in a jeep, half of the Officers’ club collapsed around him, looking more lost than B.J. had ever seen him.

“Doctor Hunnicutt?”

“B.J., please,” B.J. says. “I’m sorry, it’s— It’s something of a shock.”

Daniel Pierce lets out a small laugh, sounding so much like Hawkeye that B.J. feels a pang in his heart. “I’m the one who should apologize. You don’t even know me, and here I am, interrupting your dinner, confusing the hell out of your wife…”

_I know you_ , B.J. thinks. _You called me once when you believed your son had died. You met my wife at a party that never happened_. _Hawkeye always talked about you with so much love and warmth I felt grateful for you without having ever met you._ Out loud, he says, “How can I help?”

“Could you… Could you come here for a few days? I think he needs someone to talk to. Someone not his dad.”

“Yeah, of course,” B.J. says.“I’ll come as soon as I can.”

They hang up not long after, but B.J. doesn’t go back to the kitchen right away, taking some time to order his thoughts. There had been an incident. What kind? Hawkeye’s dad had seemed reluctant to give him more details over the phone, which B.J. can understand, but it doesn’t make it any easier not to panic. The one thing B.J. is sure of is that it had been bad enough—and that Hawkeye was lonely enough—for his father to seek out the help of someone he had never talked to.

_God, Hawk. Why didn’t you tell me anything?_

***

For some reason, B.J. had never really let himself imagine visiting Hawkeye in Crabapple Cove after the war. In his mind, when they met, it was always somewhere else, Portland or Boston, San Francisco or New York. Maybe because the idea of being with Hawkeye in his hometown felt too much like something B.J. craved and couldn’t have, like an impossible fantasy. And so it’s a bit surreal to find himself standing on the porch of Hawkeye’s house, one hand holding his suitcase, the other one ready to knock on the door. For a few seconds, B.J. almost forgets that he’s here because Hawkeye needs him, and not because Hawkeye invited him. Then, the dreamlike sensation passes and B.J. is left only with the feeling of dread that has settled in his chest ever since the phone call. B.J. knocks on the door. After a moment, it opens on an older and shorter version of Hawkeye.

“Doctor Pierce,” B.J. says, extending one hand in greeting. “I’m B.J.”

“Call me Daniel,” Hawkeye’s dad replies. He ignores B.J.’s hand and pulls him into a hug. “C’mon in.”

Before B.J. can protest, he pries B.J.’s suitcase away from him and ushers B.J. into the house. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble?”

“No,” B.J. says, as Daniels leads them down a corridor. Peg had been fine with it, even suggesting that B.J. should invite Hawkeye to stay with them for a while. _Maybe a change of scenery will help your friend,_ she had told him. It had left B.J. too stunned to reply, but it hadn’t wholly appeased his guilt. Maybe nothing ever will. So he had taken a couple of days off work, making sure that he could stay for longer than a weekend if necessary, and here he was. “No trouble at all,” he adds, stepping into what appears to be the kitchen.

“Here, sit down.” Daniel gestures toward a small table with a pair of mismatched chairs. It’s charming and very much at odds with the way Peg keeps their interior always pristine and perfectly arranged. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Just water, thank you.”

“Ben is upstairs, in his room,” Daniel says. He puts a glass of water in front of B.J. before sitting down on the unoccupied chair. “He hasn’t really left it since… Since the incident. But I thought maybe you and I should talk first.”

“What happened?”

“About ten days ago, a little girl came in. Bad fall, a broken leg, but no apparent complications. One moment Ben was taking care of her, making her laugh; the next, he was yelling that he didn’t have the proper instruments to amputate her.” _God._ “Scared the hell out of the girl, her mother, and me. Scared the hell out of himself. I had to calm him down and when he came back to himself, he just left, went straight to his bedroom. I’ve been trying to get him to talk to me, but—”

“I’ll talk to him,” B.J. assures. He doesn’t know what triggered this, but he won’t fail Hawkeye this time. He can’t.

“There’s another reason I called you. He’s been having nightmares lately. Bad ones. A lot of screaming. Most of it doesn’t make any sense but sometimes… Sometimes he screams your name.”

B.J. looks down. He wants to say something as if it were up to him to explain Hawkeye’s nightmares, as if he needed to justify himself for some reason, but nothing comes to mind. “I’ll talk to him,” he repeats. His voice sounds feeble to his own ears.

Daniel sighs. “Right, well. I’ll show you to Ben’s room, then. Don’t worry about your suitcase. I’ll put it in the guestroom.” He stands up and B.J. follows him back into the corridor, then up a flight of stairs. “Here it is.” Daniel points at a door on B.J.’s left. “I have to leave for my poker game soon so I won’t be bothering you, boys.”

“I… Thank you. For calling me,” B.J. says, before turning toward the door.

He knocks once, twice. After a few seconds, he hears Hawkeye say, “Come in.”

B.J. opens the door but, instead of entering the room, leans against the doorway. “Hello, stranger.”

“Beej? What are you doing here?”

Hawkeye is sitting on his bed, his back against the wall, a journal in his lap. For a moment, it feels to B.J. that they’ve been here before. That they have already done this. Him standing in a doorway, Hawkeye on a bed, and a thousand unsaid things lingering between them. B.J. shakes his head in an attempt to chase away visions of a hospital room, of dark greenish walls.

“Your father called me. Told me what happened.”

“Ah, of course.” Hawkeye blinks. He seems incredibly unhappy and B.J.’s heart drops a little.

“Do you want me… Do you want me to leave?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hawkeye admonishes. “C’mon, get inside. Seeing you hovering like this, I’m half-expecting Sidney to show up in my childhood bedroom too.” So B.J. isn’t the only one with the weird sensation of _déjà vu_.

“At least, the decor is much better,” B.J. says, stepping in and shutting the door behind him.

B.J. lets his gaze wander around Hawkeye’s bedroom. It’s almost as cluttered as the Swamp used to be. On a small bedside table, there’s a lamp and a pile of books whose titles B.J. can’t make out from where he is, and the floor is littered with various scientific journals, a few dirty shirts and socks. There's a row of shelves on the wall facing the bed with all sorts of items on them. A photograph of a young Hawkeye standing between his father and a woman that must be his mom. One of a lanky, teenaged Hawkeye with another boy. Their shoulders are pressed together, and they are laughing. More books whose titles B.J. can read, this time: _On the Infinite Universe and Worlds_ , _The Price of Salt, War and Peace_. A few records. And, in a corner, a basket full of yarn balls. If B.J. wasn’t so worried about Hawkeye, he would be thrilled to be standing here, with so much _Hawkeye_ surrounding him. Hawkeye who hasn’t missed B.J.’s study of his room.

“I endeavor to keep this room as tastefully untidy as it was when I was sixteen.”

“You’re succeeding,” B.J. says. “ _War and Peace_ , uh?”

“Research, Beej! What if those wars didn’t happen either? What if the book is about something else now?”

B.J. chuckles. “And?”

“It’s definitely about war. And peace.”

“Figures. Otherwise, it would have been called ‘No War, No Peace,” B.J. says, as he settles down on the mattress next to Hawkeye. Hawkeye rolls his eyes, but B.J. can see that he’s trying not to smile and he counts it as a win. Keeping his tone light and unaccusing, he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me, Hawk?”

The hint of a smile vanishes from Hawkeye’s features. “Well, maybe I’m still composing my letter. ‘Dear B.J.,’” Hawkeye recites, “Remember that time in Korea I went off my rocker? Good news: it happened again! Yesterday, I almost amputated a little girl who only needed a cast. How has _your_ week been?’”

“You didn’t almost amputate her,” B.J. points out, although he couldn’t tell if it’s Hawkeye he’s trying to reassure, or himself. “You had a… a lapse of judgment. There was no harm done.”

“Yeah, this time. Because my father was there. What about the day he isn’t? What about the day I’m alone?”

B.J. has no answer to that question. So he repeats, “I still wish you had told me.”

“Beej, you finally got what you wanted. You finally got to be with Peg and Erin. I couldn’t… I couldn’t disturb that.”

“You wouldn’t have disturbed me,” B.J. replies, a bit indignant. “Why would you think that?”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“Why would I think that? Well, I wonder! Maybe because I distinctly remember you informing me again and again that I couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like to be away from the wife and kid I don’t have. That I had no idea what _you_ were missing. So forgive me, fella, for believing you’d rather be with them than take care of the crazy guy you met during a war that didn’t happen!”

There’s a manic edge to Hawkeye’s voice by the end of his tirade and B.J. should tell him that he’s wrong, that, of course, B.J. wants to take care of him. He’s his _best friend_. Instead, he does what he always does when Hawkeye gets like this. He fights back.

“And what? You think those past months have been a cakewalk for me? Hell, Hawk, half the time I don’t even know if I have any right to call myself Erin’s father!”

B.J. stops himself before he can utter something even more damning like, _I sure can’t call myself Peg’s husband_. He draws in a deep breath, stands up, and storms out.

***

It’s not so simple to flee when you’re in the middle of a foreign place, trying not to get lost. For some time, B.J. follows a small path leading him out of Crabapple Cove, refusing to think and focusing on putting one foot in front of the other until he happens upon a lake. It’s a beautiful sight: the late afternoon sun reflecting on the water, making it gleam almost gold, tall grass and trees surrounding it, not another human being around—the perfect place to ruminate in peace.

B.J. lets himself fall on the ground. _God_. This couldn’t have gone any worse. He had promised Daniel that he would _talk_ to Hawkeye. Daniel who had called him for help because Hawkeye had just had a breakdown or relapse or whatever word Sidney would have used for it, one only B.J. could understand the roots of. And what had B.J. done? He had lashed out at Hawkeye. As if Hawkeye wasn’t deserving of the same patience and compassion B.J. would have extended to any other patient. He hadn’t even asked Hawkeye if he knew what had triggered this. Out of frustration, B.J. tears off chunks of grass and throws them in the water, but it doesn’t appease this… This thing inside B.J. that yearns to crawl out. Some days it feels like a sob. Some days like a prayer. Today it feels like a scream. 

If B.J. has to be honest with himself, it’s not difficult to pinpoint why he reacted so badly. Hawkeye struck a nerve. Hawkeye struck several nerves. He has the uncanny ability to do that, no matter how unintentional it sometimes is. How dare he presume what B.J. wants? Can’t B.J. decide for himself? _But you did_ , a voice retorts. _When you left Boston and got on that plane, you chose to commit to this life. You chose not to tell Hawkeye anything. Can you blame him for assuming you were happy on the other side of the country when you’ve been working so hard to convince yourself of it too?_

B.J. puts his head in his hands as if that could somehow protect him from the truth. It doesn’t. He can see it now: how he keeps running in circles, always making the same mistakes, never learning from them. What he can’t see is this: how to break free from it. All his life, B.J. had thought that if he followed the rules, if he did everything that was expected from him, then he would be safe. Safe from what, though, B.J. wouldn’t be able to say. So he had excelled in everything he could and had gotten married and had gone to Korea instead of letting Ned Gradinger Sr. get him out of it. There, for two years, he had hoped that if he believed in his perfect future strongly enough—the weary doctor comes home to his wife and kid, and they all live happily ever after—it would become reality and B.J. would, once again, be safe. Saved. Except B.J. had come home a soldier and with a resolution that would turn his entire life upside down. And then this. This world where B.J. is an anomaly. Someone who has been molded by an event that never was. Someone who shouldn’t _exist_. But here he is, isn’t he? Sitting in the grass, sensing its blades underneath his fingertips, breathing in the smells of a beautiful spring day. Here he is and he is still… No. B.J. can’t bring himself to formulate that last thought. Not yet.

The sun is starting to set and B.J. is about to get up, go back to the house and apologize to Hawkeye when a noise from behind him makes him jump a little. He glances back to see Hawkeye standing a few feet away from him and B.J. exhales. He gestures for Hawkeye to come to sit next to him which Hawkeye does, leaving enough space between them for another person to fit in between. He doesn’t look at B.J. either. Well. B.J. can’t say he didn’t bring it upon himself.

“How’d you know where to find me?” B.J. asks, breaking the silence.

Hawkeye keeps his gaze fixed on the lake. “I didn’t. This is where I come to… To think. We used to play here all the time with Tommy when we were younger.”

“Tommy?” B.J. doesn’t remember hearing that name before.

“The other boy in that picture you were staring at earlier.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Listen, Hawk, I’m sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” Hawkeye says. His voice is even, but B.J. can see how his shoulders relax a bit and how he shifts slightly so that their eyes can meet. “They’re lucky to have you, you know? No matter which version of you. Even the mustachioed one.”

B.J. knows Hawkeye means it, even if he can’t quite convince himself of it. He has no wish to discuss this again, though. It’s too raw and B.J. feels too vulnerable, as easy for Hawkeye to read as an open wound. So he nods and stirs the conversation in a different direction. “Any idea what triggered your—”

“Nervous breakdown? Tailspin? Crack-up? Meltdown?”

“Momentary lapse of judgment.”

“Tommy.”

“The boy in the picture?”

Hawkeye sighs. “I don’t think I ever told you about this. It was when Trap— It was before they sentenced you to Korea and it’s not really on my list of favorite bedtime stories. Tommy was one of my best friends. Met when we were in 5th grade, got up to every foolish thing you can imagine two teenage boys doing together. And when the war came, he enrolled. In the infantry. He said he wanted to write a book about the war. The real one, not the one you see in the movies. So one day he was visiting, drinking martinis in the Swamp, telling me all about his book, and a few days later he was visiting the OR.”

B.J. can guess how that visit ended. “He didn’t make it.”

“No. There was… There was nothing I could do. He died a few minutes after being brought in.”

“God, Hawk, I’m sorry.”

Hawkeye sends him a small smile before continuing. “See, it never occurred to me that, here, Tommy might not be dead. I’ve spent all those months looking at his picture at least once a day and the thought never even crossed my mind. His death was so… so final to me. It was the first time I cried since I arrived in Korea.” Hawkeye’s eyes are damp now, B.J. notices. “And then, ten days ago, I rolled out of bed, saw the picture and it hit me. I thought, ‘Where is Tommy? Why hasn’t dad talked to me about him? Why haven’t I heard from him?’”

“And?”

“And he’s dead. I couldn’t ask dad, of course, so I had to make some discreet inquiries here and there. It was a car accident, a few years ago.”

B.J. wonders how many times one person can pronounce the words _I’m sorry_ during a conversation without them losing all meaning. He puts his hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder instead, a silent attempt at comfort, and hopes Hawkeye will understand everything B.J. is trying to communicate to him.

“Henry?” he asks because Hawkeye must have thought of him too.

“Maybe he’s alive, maybe he isn’t. I think I’d rather assume he is than know for sure.” Hawkeye laughs, but it’s harsh and painful. “It’s funny. I’ve always wanted to know everything. I guess not anymore.”

B.J. squeezes his shoulder. “And that was when—?”

“Yeah. She was the first patient I had to take care of after learning that Tommy had died for the second time. This is truly a terrible talk to have sober, you know.”

“We’ll get drunk after,” B.J. promises. “Drinks are on me.”

“Not if I get them in me first.” 

“First, you need to finish the story, Hawk,” B.J. says, voice gentle.

Hawkeye’s shoulders drop at that, but he nods. “Everything was going well and then, suddenly, I couldn’t remember which world was which. If I was… really here and Korea was the nightmare, or if I was in Korea and this was a dream. Every day I keep repeating to myself that it didn’t happen but I can’t—” Hawkeye doesn’t finish his sentence, words abandoning him for once. B.J. could probably do it for him. _But I can’t bring myself to believe it. I don’t know how._ B.J. had failed to realize that Hawkeye was stuck, too preoccupied with keeping together the pieces of his own life and blinded by Hawkeye’s reassurance that he would be alright, by the light tone of his letters. In this too, B.J. seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Eventually, Hawkeye says, “What am I supposed to be if I can’t be a doctor anymore?”

B.J. wishes he could help him. He’s a doctor too, after all. That’s what they do. But he’s been trained to fix bodies, not minds. “Don’t you think maybe you should talk to someone?”

“I am. In my head.” Hawkeye bursts out laughing at B.J.’s baffled stare. This time, it’s a bright, joyous thing and B.J. grins back. “Not like that! I’ve been thinking about what Sidney would say.”

“And how would you know that? You couldn’t even tell when he was bluffing.”

“Easy. He usually told me the contrary of what I wanted him to say.” 

“So, what would Sidney say?” B.J. asks, even though he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer. As if, somehow, it had been inevitable that they would end up having this discussion. As if the past months had only been a lead-up to it. Still, hearing Hawkeye say it knocks the breath out of him.

“I think… I think he would tell me that I need to confront it. That I need to go back there. Back to Korea.”

Uttering the next words feels every bit as hard as taking a plane to Korea and leaving his wife and baby girl behind, as watching Hawkeye get into a chopper, as picking up the phone and asking, _do you remember me_? Yet B.J. has to. He can’t fix what the war has broken within Hawkeye, but he can do this. 

“Then we will.”

***

B.J. glances at his watch and frowns. Hawkeye left for the restroom, telling B.J. he would be back in five minutes, more than twenty minutes ago now. They have plenty of time before boarding their flight, but an uneasy sensation runs down B.J.’s spine and he decides to go check on Hawkeye. When he enters the bathroom, it’s silent and there’s no one in sight.

“Hawk?” he asks. He hears a small grunt coming from a distant stall and moves closer to it. “Hawkeye?” he repeats. “Is that you?”

B.J. manages to make out a faint, _Beej,_ before the unmistakable sounds of someone being sick fill the room. Right. B.J. leans against the door separating him from Hawkeye, wishing it would vanish so that he could… What could he do? Hold Hawkeye through it, maybe. Like Hawkeye had held him on that first day, when B.J. was kneeling on the ground, his body attempting to reject the very reality of war. After a while, the noise stops and B.J. tries again.

“Anything I can do?”

“No,” Hawkeye mumbles. “I’m coming out.”

B.J. takes a step back just as the door opens. Hawkeye looks pale and exhausted and B.J. wonders if they shouldn’t give up on this idea. If it isn’t too much for Hawkeye.

“We don’t have to do it,” B.J. says. Hawkeye walks past him and toward the sink, splashing his face with water and starting to wash his hands as meticulously as if he were scrubbing up for surgery. “We can go back home. I’ll tell Peg—” Well, B.J. has no idea what he’d tell Peg. Especially considering how their conversation about him leaving for Korea had gone. But that’s not Hawkeye’s problem. Before B.J. can continue, though, Hawkeye says,

“I’m fine, Beej.” He takes a bottle of pills out of his pocket and swallows two of them.

“Tranquilizers?”

“Just for the flight.”

B.J. nods. As they make their way back to the gate, his thoughts turn to Peg, to the evening he had announced that he needed to go to Korea. It had taken B.J. a week after returning from Crabapple Cove to muster the courage to have that talk. A week during which he had gone over every possible explanation, every plausible lie that could somehow justify him leaving again so soon, and not for the other side of the country, this time, but for the other side of the world. For once, though, B.J. hadn’t been able to come up with anything. So he had told Peg the truth, or the closest thing there was to it.

“Peggy?”

“Yes?”

Peg hadn’t looked up from the book in her lap. She had been sitting on the other side of the sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, hair caught in a messy bun, a sight so familiar it had made B.J. ache a little. _Forgive me,_ B.J. had almost said. As if something deep within him had known this would end up changing everything. _Forgive me for what I’m about to do_. Then he had uttered the words.

“When I was in Maine… I promised Hawkeye I would go with him to Korea.”

At that, Peg had closed her book. “You promised you would accompany Hawkeye to Korea?” she had asked, sounding more confused than angry. She had shown no sign of remembering that B.J. had talked about Korea once before, on a seemingly ordinary morning, all those months ago. He had guessed that for her it had been an unremarkable morning.

“Yes.”

“Why does he need to go to Korea?”

B.J. had drawn in a breath. “I’m sorry,” he had said. “I can’t tell you that.” Quickly, he had added, “It would only be for a week. Ten days at most. You know I wouldn’t leave you and Erin for long.”

Peg had dismissed B.J.’s concern and guilt with a wave of her hand. “I can take care of myself and Erin, B.J. And you know my parents would be more than happy to come to lend a hand for a while. Or my friend Sarah. That’s not… Why can’t you tell me?” But before B.J. had been able to answer, she had let out a small, joyless laugh and gone on. “You’ve been so different lately. Sometimes I wonder if I know you at all.”

So much for B.J. thinking that he had fooled her, then. She could tell that something was wrong. Of course, she could. But this discussion had seemed even more impossible to have than their current one.

“I’m sorry,” B.J. had said again. “I need you to trust me when I say that if I could tell you, I would. I would, Peg.”

Peg had sent him a searching look as if to appraise how trustworthy B.J. was. It hurt that she should be so wary of believing him and yet had B.J. not deserved it? He had lied to her, again and again. To this version of her as well as to the one B.J. still called _his_ Peg in his mind. Some of those had been lies of omission, some were deliberate, and some were lies that B.J. had also told himself. To survive. To go on. But being aware of his own failures hadn’t made Peg’s doubtful gaze hurt less.

“This is important to… To your friend?” Peg had asked eventually.

“Yes.”

“And it’s important for you to help him.”

It hadn’t been a question, but B.J. had answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“Alright, then.”

B.J. had thanked her, his relief tinged with shame, and that had been the end of that conversation, but not the end of it. In the following weeks, things between them had been strained, the atmosphere imbued with the kind of tension that doesn’t disappear on its own. One they would have to address sooner or later. Now that they had both acknowledged that there was a problem, they wouldn’t be able to go back to ignoring it forever. _After Korea_ , B.J. repeated to himself. They would talk after Korea.

B.J. had been too preoccupied with the situation at home and getting ready for the trip to really examine what it meant to go back to Korea, to the one place in the world he had sworn he would never set foot in again. Now, sitting next to a drowsing Hawkeye, B.J. doesn’t dwell on it either. He needs to concentrate on getting Hawkeye through the flight to Tokyo, then the one to Seoul. And then they will be there and it will be too late to reflect on anything.

***

Hawkeye spends most of the journey dozing on and off, taking another pill before their flight to Seoul. It doesn’t appear to be a peaceful slumber—Hawkeye is agitated and keeps muttering fragmented sentences B.J. can’t make sense of—but it’s probably still better for Hawkeye than to be wide awake, and he only emerges from it as they’re about to land. At the realization that they’re nearly there, an expression B.J. has only witnessed once before, when he had tried to get Hawkeye out of that jeep and away from the Officers’ club, darkens Hawkeye’s features. One of pure terror. That it disappears almost immediately doesn’t really reassure B.J., but there’s not much he can do or say on a plane full of strangers. So he just presses his shoulder against Hawkeye’s as they, once more, land in Korea.

The hotel B.J. has booked isn’t located anywhere near where the army used to make them stay. Whatever happens during this trip, he had thought it would be safer to have the option of retreating to a neutral place, one not saturated with memories. As B.J. drives them through Seoul, though, he realizes that he barely recognizes any of it. Some of the neighborhoods, some of the buildings seem familiar, but B.J. had always walked through a city in ruins. This one, despite the ever-present soldiers patrolling its streets, has never been destroyed by war. 

“D’you want to get some more rest?” B.J. asks while they’re waiting at the reception to get their keys. “I think we’re yesterday.”

“If we’re yesterday, didn’t we already sleep?”

“Well, you did.”

“Do you want to?”

“I asked first!”

Hawkeye shrugs. “I don’t think I could sleep again,” he says, and that settles it.

So, after leaving their suitcases in their respective rooms, they climb into the car again, and B.J. drives them north, toward Uijeongbu. They chatter mindlessly on the road, neither of them paying much attention to what they’re saying. It’s the rhythm that counts, the smooth back and forth, knowing that for every line uttered, there will be a line answered. It soothes B.J.’s nerves, the wild beating of his heart. Until, all of a sudden, Hawkeye falls silent.

“Hawk? What is it?”

“It’s here, Beej. We’re here. Stop the car!”

B.J. parks the car on the side of the road before gazing around, confused at how he could have missed it. But, like with the streets of Seoul, there is no feeling of instant recognition. B.J. sees nothing but fields and humid green grass, so different from the mix of mud and burnt grass he recalls. It’s the end of spring, which has always been the best season here. A few blessed weeks during which the icy cold Korean winter had been behind them, at last, but they hadn’t been suffocating under the summer heat yet. Weeks during which they could sleep without being bundled up in five different layers of clothing, and without wishing they could crawl out of their skin either. But B.J. has never witnessed such a spring in Korea, with nature free to grow. Hawkeye must sense his disorientation because he points at a small hill in front of them and says, _the chopper pad_. The landscape rearranges itself under B.J.’s eyes.

He can see it now. It’s here. They’re here.

They both get out of the car and take a path deviating from the main road, one that leads them right to the middle of the fields. _This is where we used to live_ , B.J. thinks, staring at the endless sea of green. _And there is nothing left of it._ Except, of course, that it isn’t true. They have never lived here. They have never laughed here, never cried here. Their feet have never trodden this ground before. This landscape has no memories of them, nor does it bear the scars of a conflict that never was. Of a thousand other things, maybe, but not this.

If this other world, the one they came from, still exists, here’s what the 4077th will be like, a hundred years from now. When time has erased every visible trace of their presence, when the only testimonies left of their passage are mines buried in the ground and sentimental items in a chest. When the only ones to remember the war are those who lived it, unread history books, and a few commemorative monuments here and there. Maybe some pieces of art people will have turned the war into. B.J. can’t imagine anything beautiful coming out of those three terrible years, but humanity has always attempted to transfigure war into something meaningful and there’s no reason to assume this one will be the exception.

In this place, yet in another life, B.J. had told Radar that understanding the cause of someone’s death and mourning this person were two different things. That being able to explain something didn’t equate to being able to move on from it. Somewhere along the road, he seems to have forgotten his own bit of wisdom. B.J. had wanted an explanation for what had happened to them, some proof that it had all been real so that he could show himself to the world and justify himself, even the parts he was ashamed of. Perhaps especially those. But that’s not how it works, is it? Those parts of him haven’t stopped existing because B.J. can’t rationalize them anymore. They’re still within him. They have been all along. So here, confronted with the unequivocal evidence that there is no war but in his and Hawkeye’s memories, B.J. feels like he can finally admit it. To himself, if not to the world.

B.J.’s gaze falls on Hawkeye standing a few feet away, at the edge of the field, scowling at a tree. The sight of him takes B.J.’s breath away; it always has. And B.J. is irrevocably in love with him.

“Any reason you’re engaged in a staring contest with an oak, Hawk?” B.J. asks as he closes the distance between them. Somehow, his admission doesn’t make it any harder to speak to Hawkeye. It remains the most natural thing in the world. 

“I think this is where we buried the time capsule.”

“We didn’t bring any shovels.”

“I don’t want to dig it up, Beej. I know there’s nothing down there.”

“But?”

But instead of answering, Hawkeye begins to walk in another direction, signalling for B.J. to follow him. It takes him a few seconds to realize where Hawkeye is leading them. They’re going to the chopper pad. A wave of apprehension washes over B.J. The last time they had stood here, Hawkeye had been taken away from him and B.J. had been helpless to do anything about it.

When they arrive up there, it’s immediately clear that the place has never been used as a landing spot for helicopters. Like everything else around them, it’s untainted by war. B.J. turns around to check if Hawkeye is thinking it too but finds Hawkeye already staring at him. There’s a look on his face B.J. hasn’t seen since he tried to corner B.J. into telling him goodbye in the middle of the mess tent, and B.J. braces himself.

“Hawk?”

“Do you… You said something when we first talked to each other again. About a promise. Do you remember?” It sounds like he’s been mulling over this for some time.

“Of course.” Hawkeye had seemed uncomfortable with it and so B.J. had never brought it up again, but he’s not about to forget the last words he said to Hawkeye before they parted.

“What promise were you talking about?”

_Oh. Oh, God._ “Wait, you didn’t— You didn’t hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“My promise,” B.J. says. He lets out a disbelieving laugh, but it feels more like a sob. “I was standing there,” B.J. gestures toward the spot where he sat on his bike, “And you were there, in the chopper. And I said: I’ll see you back in the States. I promise. But just in case, I left you a note.”

“I thought it might be something like that,” Hawkeye says. He smiles and it’s soft and wistful. “No. I didn’t hear it.”

“You…” B.J. pauses, hit by a realization. One that makes him wish he could punch something. “You thought it was goodbye, didn’t you?”

“Well, those were pretty big rocks, you know. It was hard to miss the message.”

“Hawk—”

“Of course, I thought it was goodbye, Beej! What else was I supposed to think?”

B.J. doesn’t answer that. “Tell me, if this had never happened to us… Would you have replied to my letters? Would you have talked to me again?”

“Would you have even sent me letters?” Hawkeye asks back. “Or would you have forgotten all about me after a few weeks back home?”

This is pointless, B.J. decides. They could keep on doing this for hours and would end up being nowhere nearer to understanding each other. So B.J. does the only thing he can think of. He takes the few steps separating him from Hawkeye and kisses him. He doesn’t intend for it to be anything other than a chaste press of lips, the physical affirmation that Hawkeye means everything to him, a way to make him _get it_. And that’s how it begins, his mouth against Hawkeye’s, soft and oh so warm, until Hawkeye’s lips open under his and suddenly there’s nothing chaste or simple about it anymore. Maybe there never was. They cling to each other, B.J.’s hands cupping Hawkeye’s jaw, Hawkeye’s hands in B.J.’s hair, as they kiss and kiss, hungry and desperate. As if this was their last chance to do so. As if there was a chopper—B.J. can almost hear it—waiting for Hawkeye. B.J. lets go of Hawkeye’s jaw to put his hands on his back, trying to bring him closer and closer and closer still.

A loud, mooing noise makes them jump apart, bringing them back to the present, forcing them to remember where they are. They both look at the road to see a farmer and his ox crossing it, unaware of Hawkeye and B.J.’s eyes on them. B.J. sighs in relief. His heart is thundering in his chest, and B.J. can’t tell if it’s because of the scare they just had or because of the kiss. God, the kiss. B.J. turns toward Hawkeye, who lowers his gaze, avoiding B.J.’s.

“Hawk—” B.J. starts, but Hawkeye raises one hand in silent plea.

“Not here, Beej.”

It sounds like a cop-out, but B.J. can’t really argue with it. They will talk about it, though, B.J. thinks while they walk down the hill. He will make sure of it.

“Anything else you wanted to go look at?” B.J. asks as he climbs back into the car.

“No,” Hawkeye says. “I’m done with this place.”

So they leave.

***

On the way back to Seoul, Hawkeye is subdued, barely making an effort to keep up with B.J.’s attempts at conversation. Somehow, it worries B.J. more than if he was talking a mile a minute, but he chooses not to push it and the rest of the journey is quiet. It’s only when they enter the lobby that Hawkeye speaks again.

“Beej? D’you think we could leave tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I can’t… I don’t want to stay here one more minute than I have to. Please.” Hawkeye looks drained, as if it’s taking the last of his strength to ask this of B.J.

“I’m gonna see what I can do,” B.J. replies.

“You’re the tops,” Hawkeye says, nudging B.J.’s shoulder with his. “I’ll be in my room.”

So B.J. spends the next hour on the phone, negotiating an exchange of plane tickets. He manages to book flights for the day after tomorrow, wincing a bit at how much this is all going to cost, and prays that Hawkeye will hang on until then. He also composes a telegram to Peg, telling her that he’ll be coming home sooner than expected. Once it’s done, he goes back to his own room and locks himself in the bathroom. He stands under the water for a long time, hoping to wash away the exhaustion of the flights, the dirt of the road, and the sense of unease sticking to his skin. It doesn’t quite work.

It’s late when B.J. knocks on Hawkeye’s door and he wouldn’t be surprised if he was fast asleep. Instead, Hawkeye appears to be well on his way to getting drunk. B.J.’s chest tightens in disappointment. He can’t blame Hawkeye for longing for a measure of oblivion after the day they have had, but he wants to talk about the kiss. With Hawkeye in this state, it won’t be possible.

“Welcome to _Dead Seoul_ ,” Hawkeye greets him, holding a more than half-empty bottle of alcohol between his fingers. “Wait a minute, that’s a bit morbid.” He frowns before clearing his throat again. “Welcome! Here, at _A Free Seoul,_ we have sake, sake, or... sake! What d’you want?”

B.J. sits down on the bed. “Sake, please.”

“An excellent choice, sir.”

“We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.” B.J. takes the glass Hawkeye offers him and grimaces as he gulps it down. Cheap sake doesn’t taste much better in this world. “It’s the best I could do.”

“Thanks, Beej,” Hawkeye says, dropping the act. He goes back to what B.J. assumes he had been doing before B.J. arrived—walking in circles, clenching and unclenching his fists, and drinking. B.J. almost feels seasick watching him.

“Hawk, will you please sit down?” B.J. pats the spot next to him. Hawkeye indulges him for a few seconds before standing up again and resuming his pacing.

“I hate being here,” Hawkeye says. He starts scratching the skin on his forearm, and B.J. flinches. “I thought that if we came back, maybe I would finally be able to believe it didn’t happen, you know? Maybe I could be a… A doctor again. But it’s so much worse here. I see them all the time. I can’t stop seeing them.”

“What do you see?”

“Their faces, Beej! The faces of every one of those kids we had to sew back up. Tell me, how do you bury that in the ground?”

Hawkeye is still scratching his skin and B.J. jumps to his feet, encircling Hawkeye’s wrist with his fingers so that he stops before he can hurt himself. “You can’t,” he says. “You can’t bury it in the ground.”

Hawkeye sags against B.J. and B.J. wraps his arms around him. “I would have given anything for it not to happen,” Hawkeye tells him. As if B.J. had ever doubted that. 

“I know, Hawk.”

“I would have given you up.”

“I know.” _That’s why I love you_.

“But it did.” Hawkeye half-screams, half-sobs the words. He takes a step back, trying to free himself from B.J.’s embrace, but B.J. refuses to let him go. After a moment, Hawkeye relents. “It happened to us. And it was real.”

Hawkeye’s voice breaks on those last words, and B.J. finally gets it. He had thought that Hawkeye was stuck, that this is what was gnawing away at him. But that wasn’t it. Or, at least, not all of it. B.J. recalls not being able to determine why Hawkeye had decided to carry on with their research, why he so thoroughly explored one philosophy after the other, but it makes sense now. B.J. had wanted proof that the war had been real so that he could stand in front of the world and bear its scrutiny, and so had Hawkeye. Except that, in Hawkeye’s case, it wasn’t the world he was facing, but himself. He was his own judge, jury, and executioner. Hawkeye had spent so much of the war being furious, being devastated...What do you do with all that anger, with all that grief when its target has disappeared? When you’ve been told that it never existed in the first place? Where do you put it? You might go mad. Or, you might turn it against yourself, telling yourself that you have no right to mourn something that didn’t happen.

“It was real,” Hawkeye repeats, as his sobs become tears.

“It was,” B.J. says. “It was.”

It’s the closest thing B.J. can say to: _it’s okay_. To: _you’re allowed to grieve for them. Margaret and Klinger, Charles and Colonel Potter, Radar and Father Mulcahy, and all those others you loved. You’re allowed to grieve for what the war did to you, what it took away from you, and you’ll never get back. The fire that burned within you. It doesn’t mean that you miss it. That you have to hate yourself for it. You’re still the brightest person I’ve ever met and you saw me when no one else did and you saved me. Did you know that? You saved me._

They stay a long time like this, standing in the middle of a hotel room, in a foreign country, in an alien world, B.J. holding Hawkeye while he cries. After Hawkeye has stopped crying, B.J. helps him to the bed, lies down next to him, and keeps on holding him through the night.

***

They don’t talk about it the next morning and they don’t talk about the kiss either. In a strange repeat of that morning in Boston, B.J. once again wakes up to an empty bed. He sits up, looking around until he sees Hawkeye standing on the balcony. When he notices that B.J. is awake, he comes back into the room and offers him a cup of coffee. B.J. doesn’t bother asking where he found it, too busy swallowing it down while Hawkeye elaborates plans for the day. He doesn’t allude to yesterday's events, and B.J. doesn’t push it. Yesterday was exhausting and nerve-wracking for them both, and he can let Hawkeye have some kind of reprieve. They have spent years not having this conversation, always skirting the edge of it. It can wait a few more hours. In the meantime, B.J. will do his best to forget about the kiss, and it will be fine.

They’re both starving, so they decide to start by finding a place to eat. They settle for a small restaurant they’ve never been to before, having tacitly agreed to avoid any further reminders of the war. It ends up being a great choice, and by the end of the meal, B.J. feels slightly more like himself. Even Hawkeye is standing a little straighter. After that, they meander through the city, avoiding the more crowded areas, drawing patterns that would be incomprehensible to anyone but them. If they were ordinary tourists, if this was a regular trip, B.J. would take advantage of this afternoon to pick up souvenirs for Peg and Erin. But they’re not, and B.J. can’t bear the idea of bringing back home any part of this place; he carries enough of it within him as it is. The only thing he’ll be coming home with is a difficult discussion to have with Peg. Whatever happens with Hawkeye later, he’s determined to talk to her, and not just to address the tension between them. There's no going back from admitting that he’s in love with Hawkeye.

Despite his morning resolve, B.J. keeps coming back to the kiss—the memory of it an almost tangible presence between them. At least to B.J. It’s in the way they break eye contact earlier than they usually would, but Hawkeye’s gaze keeps coming back to him whenever he believes B.J. is unaware of it. The way their knees uncharacteristically don’t brush under the table. How Hawkeye hesitates a fraction of a second before grabbing B.J.’s sleeve to usher him in a new direction. It should feel awkward, but to B.J. it’s electrifying. Kissing Peg has never affected him like this. It’s never been all-consuming. Like it could devour him whole.

B.J. has spent so much time ignoring the want, pretending it wasn’t there… Even during the plane ride back to San Francisco, when he had made that promise to himself, B.J. had not allowed his imagination to wander. He couldn’t. But a dam within him seems to have broken when Hawkeye’s lips opened under his, when Hawkeye welcomed him. Because he did, B.J. is sure of that. It’s what comes after, B.J. is unsure of. Does Hawkeye want more? Would he have let B.J. kiss his jaw, his neck, had they not been interrupted? Would he ever let B.J. divest him of his clothes one by one, would he let B.J. explore his body? Would he let B.J. fuck him? B.J.’s neck grows hot at the idea and he quickly tries to focus on something else. Does Hawkeye feel the same? He remembers Hawkeye saying, _I couldn’t risk you not remembering me_. Hawkeye saying, _there’s nothing here I’m going to miss. Except you_. If that’s not love, B.J. hopes it’s close enough for him to have a chance.

B.J. keeps his word, though, and doesn’t say anything about the kiss during the day. He waits. It’s only after they’ve had dinner, after they’ve gone back to the hotel and separated to shower, after B.J. has knocked on Hawkeye’s door and sat down on the bed, a glass of what’s left of yesterday’s sake in hand, that he asks the question. Hawkeye is sitting in front of B.J., having appropriated the only chair in the room. For once, B.J. is thankful for the distance between them. It will be easier that way.

“So, what happens tomorrow?”

“I guess we go home.”

“Just go home?”

“Go home, go on, go grey, go with the wind, try not to go mad… Take your pick, Beej!” Hawkeye replies in a light tone.

He’s trying to distract B.J., but it won’t work. They’re going to deal with this, whether Hawkeye wants to or not.

“Hawk…” B.J. pauses, searching for the best way to broach the topic. In the end, he settles for being blunt. At least, Hawkeye won’t be able to act like he doesn’t understand what B.J is saying. “We kissed.”

At that, Hawkeye blinks. And blinks again. And again.

“I didn’t notice ‘go mute’ was on your list,” B.J. adds.

“I— I didn’t think you’d want to talk about it,” Hawkeye stammers. As if B.J. is the one to continually shy away from important talks. But before B.J. can reply, Hawkeye continues. “It was an emotional moment, Beej. I’m not gonna hold you to it. I know you’re going home to your family. To Peg and Erin. It’s what you’ve always wanted. It’s what you deserve.”

Hawkeye almost says those last words to himself and B.J. can’t help it. He laughs, sharp and biting.

“You always do that, you know? You always tell me what I want and you always act according to what you _think_ I want, but what do you know about what I want, Hawk? When have you ever asked me?” Something very much like hurt crosses Hawkeye’s features before his lips curl into a smile. B.J. recognizes it. It’s the one that usually means he’s about to lash back. But, B.J. won’t let him. “Look, d’you remember that last dinner we all had together? When I made that joke about… About running off with someone?”

Hawkeye furrows his brow. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t a joke. Or it was, but it wasn’t.”

“Oh, right. Well, that makes more sense!”

B.J. shakes his head in frustration. “Listen. We just had that fight in the mess tent and I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home and away from that stinking place so badly, but at the same time, I couldn’t bear the idea of being away from you. So I made a joke.”

“You left, Beej.”

“I did,” B.J. acknowledges. “I only had two things to keep me sane, Hawk. I had you and I had a little house in Mill Valley. So when they took you away but told me I could go home? Spend Erin’s birthday with her? I didn’t even stop to think about it. It was the only possible choice. But I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry— I’m sorry I left you there.”

Hawkeye nods, but B.J. can’t tell if he’s accepting B.J.’s apology or forgiving him. When he doesn’t add anything, B.J. goes on.

“Anyway, it was different after you told me you didn’t believe we would see each other again. After saying goodbye. Starting that bike felt like the hardest thing I’d ever done. Like stopping my own heart. And suddenly, I couldn’t keep ignoring all the things I’d been ignoring until then. It was like your absence lit up every single thing I’d hidden. So on the plane back home, I promised myself that I was gonna talk to Peg and tell her...” B.J. interrupts himself to gulp down the rest of his drink. This is the thing he is the most ashamed of and he has to admit it to _Hawkeye_. He lowers his gaze on his hands, on the empty glass between them, and forces the words out. “Tell her I wasn’t the man who’d left for Korea two years ago. Tell her it wasn’t her fault or mine, it was just the war. Do you… Do you hate me? For spending two years hanging on to them, only to leave them the minute I come back?”

“Of course not. Of course, I don’t hate you.”

There’s sorrow in Hawkeye’s voice and B.J. can tell he means it, but he still can’t bear to meet his eyes.

“I hated me,” B.J. says. “I was so damn tired of lying, but I hated the idea that I’d used them. So when this mad, insane thing happened to us and there was no explanation for it, I thought maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, you know? It’s not like I could tell Peg the war had changed me anymore. I thought, maybe there’s no way out of it. Maybe when you’ve been lying for so long and to so many people, you just gotta keep on lying.”

“Beej…”

“So I tried. For Peg and Erin. I thought it was the least I could do. And wanna know what the punchline is?”

“Always.”

“It didn’t work. Funny, isn’t it? I didn’t fool Peg and I didn’t fool myself. Apparently, it’s not like riding a bike. Once you’ve stopped lying to yourself, it’s really damn hard to pick it up again.”

When B.J. looks up, Hawkeye is staring back at him, a pained expression on his face, and B.J. knows this is some of B.J.’s pain Hawkeye is taking on himself. If there’s one thing the war hasn’t robbed Hawkeye of, it’s his infinite capacity for compassion and, in that moment, B.J. is fiercely grateful for it. B.J.’s not done, though. He has one last confession to make. The most important, terrifying one. So, over the deafening sound of his beating heart, B.J. says,

“Truth is, I’m in love with you. It doesn’t matter if no one else remembers the war. Us. It probably wouldn’t matter if you didn’t remember me. I would still be in love with you. It doesn’t end with you stepping in a chopper, and it doesn’t end with me going home, and it doesn’t end with the world changing. It just… doesn’t end.”

“You—?”

“I’m in love with you,” B.J. repeats, and it’s oh so easy to say it now. “I don’t know what happened to us, Hawk, or why it happened. But I know that I’m in love with you.”

“In every possible world,” Hawkeye answers, and B.J. frowns in confusion. “That’s what I used to tell myself when I wrote to you about all those theories,” Hawkeye explains. “In every possible world, I’m in love with you.”

And B.J. had _hoped_ , but hearing it feels a bit like B.J. has been drowning his whole life and is finally surfacing. Like seeing the sky for the first time. Like learning to breathe.

“Hawk—”

But before B.J. can finish his sentence, Hawkeye closes the distance between them, half-stumbling, half-settling in B.J.’s lap. B.J. laughs, in joy, in relief, as he drops the empty glass on the bed and catches Hawkeye’s elbows to steady him. Hawkeye grabs his neck and brings their mouths together. This time, there’s nothing even remotely chaste about it. B.J.’s lips part under Hawkeye’s and their tongues touch and it’s every bit as all-consuming and intoxicating and maddening as that first kiss had been. Except they’re not outside anymore and Hawkeye lets his hands wander down B.J.’s spine until they reach the hem of his shirt and slip under it, palms hot against B.J.’s skin. B.J. shivers at the sensation of Hawkeye’s hands on him, at the proof that Hawkeye wants this. Him. He kisses Hawkeye harder, making him moan, before he has to break the kiss. He hides his face in the crook of Hawkeye’s neck.

“Beej? Is everything okay?” Hawkeye asks, a note of worry in his voice.

“Yeah, I just think we shouldn’t—”

“Of course,” Hawkeye interrupts. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. We don’t have to—”

B.J. does what he’s refrained from doing for years and shuts him up with a kiss. “Will you please let me finish? I just meant I don’t think we should do anything too… Before I talk to Peg.”

Hawkeye looks chastised. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” B.J. takes one of Hawkeye’s hands in his, entangling their fingers. “Don’t apologize. Believe me, Hawk, I’d like nothing more than to spend our last night in this country making love to you.” Something deep and hot within B.J. twists as he says the words out loud. “But I don’t want to remember it as…”

He doesn’t want to remember it as him cheating on Peg. And maybe B.J. is drawing a pointless line in the sand to make himself feel better. Maybe having spent the better part of the past three years in love with Hawkeye is as bad as sleeping with him. Maybe it’s even worse. But B.J. couldn’t help falling for Hawkeye, nor could he help how it brought down every wall he had built to keep himself safe and forced him to face every lie he had ever told himself. This, though, he can do properly.

“It’s fine, Beej,” Hawkeye answers. “I get it.”

B.J. isn’t so confident he does, that he doesn’t see it as a rejection, and he kisses Hawkeye one last time. For now, at least. It’s tender and somewhat sad, almost like they’re saying goodbye again even though they’re not. Or, if it’s a goodbye, then it’s a goodbye to those three years during which they couldn’t talk about this. During which B.J. couldn’t even think about it. It hurt them both, B.J. knows. But, back then, there had seemed to be no other choice. Not if B.J. wanted to survive.

“I love you,” B.J. says. Then, before Hawkeye can reply, he repeats it. “I love you.” As if saying the words out loud, again and again, could erase all those years keeping silent. As if it could make up for lost time.

It can’t, of course, but the way Hawkeye stares back at him, happy and almost dazed, gives B.J. hope for the future.

***

“I don’t think I could sleep,” Hawkeye says.

They’re lying in bed, fully clothed, Hawkeye’s face against B.J.’s shoulder, his fingers drawing strange patterns on B.J.’s chest while B.J. plays with his hair. Because he’s always been curious as to what it would feel like and because he’s a bit afraid that Hawkeye will disappear if he stops touching him, no matter how irrational that is. 

“Let’s not sleep then,” B.J. replies. It’s not like they have many hours left before their flight. “Your father told me you were having nightmares?”

“I told you I was having nightmares, remember? When you were trying to get me in bed with you.”

B.J. splutters. “I wasn’t… I didn’t… I _missed_ you!”

Hawkeye tilts his head up and gives B.J. a skeptical glance. “Is that what you told yourself, Hunnicutt?”

B.J. tactically decides to go back to the original topic. “He told me that sometimes you screa— that you said my name,” he says, abandoning Hawkeye’s hair to rub his shoulder with slow, soothing motions.

“Is there anything he hasn’t told you?”

“I guess he was worried, Hawk. That’s what fathers do.” Most fathers, anyway. B.J. dismisses the thought as soon as it occurs. He doesn’t want to consider this now.

Hawkeye sighs. “You know how I told you I keep seeing their faces? Sometimes… Sometimes it’s yours I see.”

“Like the time you were having those nightmares about your childhood friends?” B.J. asks, because it’s better than asking, _do I die in your nightmares?_

“Yeah.”

“What about… What if you saw my face every day? Would that help?”

“Beej?”

“After I talk to Peg,” B.J. explains. “Would you consider moving to California? I can’t… I can’t leave Erin again, not for long. And I don’t want to be away from you. But maybe you don’t want to leave your dad.” And B.J. is just spilling thoughts out loud now, but he can’t stop. “I guess we could continue what we’ve been doing until Erin is older. Phone calls, letters. I’d come see you as often as I could, of course, and—”

“Beej,” Hawkeye interrupts, voice gentle. “Can I ask you something?”

“Whatever you want.”

“If this hadn’t happened to us… What was the plan? What were you going to do after talking to Peg?”

“I’m not sure,” B.J. admits, fingers tightening around Hawkeye’s shoulder. “The only plan was to talk to Peg. Stop lying. I didn’t really allow myself to imagine anything beyond that.”

B.J. hadn’t put words on what he felt for Hawkeye before that moment in the field, not because he couldn’t define it, but because it was too huge, too encompassing. Because he knew that, once acknowledged, there would be no coming back from it. And so, for the longest time, he hadn’t named it, nor had he let his mind wander. Except in the deep of the night, when he could pretend he was dreaming.

“Do you think you can imagine it now?” Hawkeye asks. “Please.”

So B.J. does. “After, I would have tried to call you. Write to you.”

“And let’s say, hypothetically, I don’t answer your phone calls. Or your letters. What then?”

“You’re too busy fending off suitors?” B.J. jokes. Well. Mostly jokes.

“I’m too busy wondering if you’ve reached Ithaca. Found your way back to Penelope.”

“I haven’t. I’m still fighting Cyclopes and storms. Making my way back to you.”

“You’ve been to Crabapple Cove, Beej. Just because it’s near the ocean doesn’t make it an island.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know we cared about geographical accuracy. In that case, neither is Mill Valley,” B.J. points out.

Hawkeye glowers a little. “Whatever. Tell me what happens after you’ve made your way back to me.”

“I don’t know, Hawk. I guess I knock on the door and hope that you’re the one to open it. And then… Then it’s up to you.”

Hawkeye lets his head fall back on B.J.’s shoulder, one hand curled right above his heart. “I love you.” He says it like it’s a simple, immutable fact and every atom in B.J.’s body aches. “About moving to California. Ask me again after you’ve talked to Peg.”

B.J. can guess why. It must be difficult for Hawkeye to envision a world where B.J. has left Peg. Not because he doubts B.J.’s sincerity, but because when you have wanted something so badly you believe you would have wanted it in every possible world, you can’t risk trusting you’ve got it until you can taste it. Until you can hold it in the palms of your hands and measure its weight, its reality. B.J. understands that. That’s how he felt about going home. That’s how he feels about Hawkeye, why he can’t stop touching him.

“I’ll say yes,” Hawkeye adds. “But after.”

“Alright, then,” B.J. says. “I’ll ask again after.”

This time, there is no chopper to drown the sound of his promise.

***

The house seems empty when B.J. arrives back home, devoid of all the noises it usually resonates with in the early evening—Peg cooking dinner and Erin babbling along. B.J. makes his way to the kitchen to see if Peg has left a note but halts before entering the room. Peg is sitting at the table, alone, a glass of what appears to be B.J.’s scotch in front of her. B.J.’s throat tightens. Peg hardly ever drinks.

“Peg? Is everything alright? Where’s Erin?” B.J. asks as he steps inside the kitchen.

Peg looks up at him and sends him a reassuring smile. “B.J.! Erin is fine. I left her at Sarah’s for the evening. I thought… I thought it would be better for us to be alone. So we can discuss some things.”

B.J. puts the suitcase he’s still holding on the floor and goes to retrieve a glass from the cupboard. Peg has left the scotch bottle on the counter and B.J. pours himself a drink, mostly to occupy his hands. He doesn’t think he could swallow anything. He had hoped to have a few hours to gather himself, to rehearse once again what he was going to tell Peg, but maybe this is better. Maybe they shouldn’t waste one more minute pretending everything is fine.

“Okay,” he says, as he leans against the counter facing Peg.

“I—” Peg starts. Stops. “How did your trip go?”

“As well as possible.”

“That’s good. I’m glad for you,” Peg says, fiddling with her glass. B.J. tries not to wonder how many she’s had. “B.J., listen. I let you go because you said it was important for your friend. And I know how you get once you’ve made a promise. How you can’t break your word. But I can’t… I can’t come second. I’m your wife.” The way she pronounces those last words as if she believes them to always be true breaks B.J.’s heart. “We used to talk, do you remember? You used to tell me everything. But you don’t talk to me anymore, not really, and you can’t tell me what’s so essential about going to Korea. It’s Hawkeye, you talk to.”

She’s right. They used to talk a lot more. B.J. loved her. She was his wife and, for a long time, his best friend. But he had never told her everything, not even when he had thought he did. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear her lay down how much this recent distance between them has hurt her. How utterly B.J. has failed her.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It sounds feeble and nowhere near enough.

Peg nods at his apology. “I just want to understand B.J. You know there’s nothing you can’t tell me, darling, right?

Except there is. Even now that B.J. has realized how much she’s been suffering from his silence, there will forever be this huge, unsayable thing between them. But there is something else B.J. can tell her, something else he can be honest about. And it doesn’t matter that he’s terrified, that he could lose it all. He _owes_ it to her. To this Peg who has no idea she lost her husband once. That she’s about to lose him again. B.J. puts his still full glass on the counter and crosses his arms against his chest. He wants to look down but forces himself to keep his eyes fixed on Peg as he says, voice shaking,

“I’m in love with Hawkeye.” A beat. “I’m sorry Peg, I didn’t know… I didn’t know before the trip.” It’s not the exact truth, but it’s the closest thing B.J. has to it, and so he offers it to Peg. In a way, it’s himself, he’s offering. Even more than when he had asked her to marry him. Even more than when he had pronounced his wedding vows. Himself, raw and exposed and stripped of all pretense.

“Oh,” Peg whispers, lips stretched in an unhappy line. B.J.’s first instinct is to go to her and smooth them with his thumb until she’s smiling again, but he can’t do that anymore. “Is it the first time you’ve felt like this?”

“Yes. No.” B.J. inhales, exhales, as he struggles to find the words to articulate something he hasn’t fully admitted to himself yet. “Looking back on it, there were… other men, but for a long time, I thought it would be enough to love you. I wanted it to be enough. I—” _You saved me too_ , B.J. can’t say. _When the war was closing in on us and having Hawkeye next to me but not being able to touch him the way I wanted, to even think about it left me almost no room to breathe_ , _I used to close my eyes and dream of how bright our life would be. It was a lie, but it was the only thing I had._

“I’d imagined a lot of things, but not this,” Peg says, and B.J. can’t tell if that’s good or bad.

“Are you… Are you gonna take Erin away from me?” B.J. hates himself a little for asking the question, but he has to.

“Jesus, B.J., is that what you think of me?” Peg looks close to tears. “Of course, I’m not going to take Erin away from you. I’m confused and sad and, yes, angry, but I want… I want you to be happy, and I want me to be happy, and above all, I want Erin to be happy. How is she supposed to be happy without her father?”

She had been, once, B.J. thinks. Once, she called another man _daddy_. Suddenly, it all catches up to B.J.—the memory of that awful day, the exhaustion from the flights and from having to part with Hawkeye, the dread at the idea of having this conversation—and he begins to sob. “I don’t know,” he lets out in a rough, awful voice. “I don’t know, Peg. God, I don’t know.”

Peg gets up and crosses the room to wrap her arms around him. She’s crying too, B.J. notices, as he hugs her back, as they hold each other and let their marriage come to an end. Strangely, for the first time since B.J. woke up one morning to find that his entire world had been altered, B.J. feels like they belong to each other again.

***

The next day, B.J. calls Hawkeye as soon as he’s awake, hoping Hawkeye isn’t still sleeping off the journey back home. As he waits for the operator to connect the call, he can’t help but remember a similar scene, all those months ago. His pounding heart, his fear that Hawkeye might have forgotten him, his relief when Hawkeye had said,

_“_ Beej?”

“Hawk,” B.J. breathes. “I talked to Peg. Will you… Will you move to California?”

“Yes.”

***

**_coda_ **

B.J. wakes up to the now familiar sight of an empty bed. One day, he’ll manage to convince Hawkeye that there’s no need to be up at dawn, but all his attempts have been unsuccessful so far. B.J. closes his eyes again for a few seconds, taking in the sound of the waves outside, of Hawkeye singing downstairs. The sounds of home. If asked, a long time ago, what kind of future he envisioned for himself, B.J. wouldn’t have described anything remotely like this, so far removed from the ordinary life he had been convinced would save him. Not because he hadn’t wanted it, but because he had never imagined it to be something he could have. And yet, it’s his.

B.J. rolls out of bed and picks up his bathrobe from where Hawkeye threw it on the floor the night before. He flushes a little at the recollection of Hawkeye’s mouth on his body, of his fingers digging into Hawkeye’s back, of sweaty skin against sweaty skin. At some point, maybe, they won’t crave each other’s touch so desperately, as if this could be taken away from them at any moment. At some point, this won’t feel all so miraculous and will begin to feel normal. When it does, B.J. won’t be sad. It’ll mean they have survived.

In the kitchen, the unexpected vision of Hawkeye surrounded by mountains of breakfast food awaits him. B.J. blinks. On the table, there are at least five plates of French toast and just as many plates of pancakes and weirdly-shaped waffles. B.J. had no idea they owned so many dishes. Hawkeye is standing at the stove, spatula in hand and hair in disarray, seemingly cooking eggs and... Are those _croissants_ in the oven? B.J. blinks again. Right.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were opening a diner? Or is it a bakery?” he asks. “I would have helped prepare the menu. Bought you an apron.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hawkeye answers, not sparing B.J. a glance. “I’m throwing Erin a breakfast party.”

“Her birthday was three weeks ago. And Peg and Sarah aren’t bringing her before dinner. As you know.”

Building a new relationship with Peg, one where she is neither his wife nor his best friend, hasn’t been that simple. But she has kept her word and B.J. gets to take care of his daughter one week out of two and he tries his best to be the father she deserves. He and Peg have slowly been working toward being close friends again. She reminds B.J. more and more of the Peg he had come back to after Korea, the one who was harsher but also freer. More independent. He hasn’t asked what’s between her and Sarah, but she seems happy.

“Then, we’ll make it a dinner breakfast party,” Hawkeye replies. “You need to broaden your horizons, Beej. Use a little imagination!”

B.J. closes the distance between them and puts one hand on Hawkeye’s waist, a silent request for him to turn around. When he does, B.J.’s heart sinks. Hawkeye looks exhausted, and there’s a wild gleam in his gaze. He must have been up all night. B.J. releases Hawkeye’s waist to cup his face, tracing the dark circles under Hawkeye’s eyes with his thumbs, caressing his cheekbones, the corners of his mouth. Hawkeye’s eyelids flutter under B.J.’s touch.

“Hey, lover. What’s this about?”

“Isn’t a man allowed to throw a dinner breakfast party in his own house?” Hawkeye sniffs, but it’s fragile. He looks away and B.J. follows his gaze. Their eyes fall on the calendar pinned to the door. _Ah._ Today is the 8th of August. It’s been two years since… Since it happened. B.J. had forgotten, but Hawkeye, of course, had not.

It’ll always be harder for Hawkeye. Even though he has found, after a few disastrous attempts, a therapist who actually helps him, even though he’s back to work, even though he can spend hours with Erin without being afraid of himself, there’s still a part of Hawkeye who hates himself for having been in Korea. An anger he carries within him and struggles to let go of. It wakes him up in the middle of the night, in tears and screaming, and B.J. holds him until it passes. There’s still a part of Hawkeye who grieves and B.J. will never fully grasp the depth of his sorrow. He’s never known for sure what had occurred between Hawkeye and Trapper, what had been between him and Margaret. He doesn’t pry. But B.J. misses them too, all the people they used to know and love, and so they miss them together. It’s not because no one else can mourn for you that you have to do it alone.

At times, B.J. still longs to understand this incomprehensible thing that happened to them so that he could fit it into a story that makes sense. One that can be told. At times, he still wishes he could justify every piece of himself as if that could make it easier to face the world. Hawkeye has brought all those books he used to read about astronomy, even though he doesn’t open them anymore, and while B.J. doesn’t believe they contain any hidden explanations, he sometimes finds himself staring at them. How do you heal from something you can’t explain, something that never was? B.J. recalls asking himself, one afternoon, in a library.

There is no definite answer to that.

For a while, B.J. had thought that to survive he had to follow the path he had trodden all his life—mold himself into who he was supposed to be, live the life he was expected to live, become as clear and transparent as a winter sky. But it had only ended up crushing him.

Now, he walks on the path he and Hawkeye keep on building every day. It’s a house on a beach that was once destined for him and Peg, it’s days spent all together with his daughter, it’s homemade breakfasts and late-night sex. It’s the dream of having their own clinic. Maybe, years in the future, when B.J. is older and wiser, he will have another answer to offer. Grief, after all, is ever-changing; it doesn’t sit still. And neither does healing. The one thing B.J. is certain of is that Hawkeye will be part of the answer.

Here and now, in their kitchen, breakfast food all around them, B.J. kisses him. It’s slow and deep, infused with everything B.J. feels for him, love and desire and tenderness, and Hawkeye opens up to him. He always does. _A dinner breakfast party sounds like a grand idea. Anything I can help with?_ B.J. says, as they break the kiss, and Hawkeye’s answering smile illuminates every corner of the room.

After the party, after they have put Erin to bed, they will sit down on the back porch, facing the ocean. Neither of them will mention what lies on the other side. It’s enough to know that they both remember. Instead, they will laugh at having to eat leftovers for at least a week and speculate on Peg and Sarah’s relationship and talk about bringing Erin to Maine to meet Hawkeye’s dad for Thanksgiving. When Hawkeye either gets a bit too handsy or a bit too sleepy, they will stand up and make their way back to their bedroom. They will make love, or they will just entangle their legs, B.J.’s arm thrown over Hawkeye’s shoulders, Hawkeye’s cheek pressed against his chest, B.J.’s heartbeat a lullaby. B.J. will wait until Hawkeye is asleep to whisper, _I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t found you_. Then, he will close his eyes.

B.J. won’t dream about Korea; he never does anymore. He dreams of Hawkeye.

He dreams of grass.

**Author's Note:**

> although i did research it, i’m still not quite sure how the library system worked in the 50s. they probably couldn’t just waltz in there and do some research but for the sake of the story i decided that they could. 
> 
> interestingly enough, i learned while writing this that Hugh Everett’s theory on parallel universes was first published in 1957. so bj & hawkeye couldn’t have read anything about it right after this happened to them. 
> 
> Dead Seoul is a reference to Gogol’s novel _Dead Souls_ & A Free Seoul to the 1931 movie _A Free Soul_. i can rec the book which i’ve read & enjoyed but not the movie which i haven’t watched. 😂
> 
> finally, while this was inspired by so many works that are dear to me it would be impossible to list them all, i more specifically owe the grass/war imagery (& the title) to Claude Simon & his novel entitled _The Grass_ , to the following Boris Pasternak quote “No one makes history, no one sees it happen, no one sees the grass grow," which comes from his novel _Doctor Zhivago_ , & to Ada Limon’s poem [Mowing](https://wordsfortheyear.com/2016/12/12/mowing-by-ada-limon/). 
> 
> xx


End file.
